Scot Lynne Ramsay showered with praise at Cannes

Published on Thursday 12 May 2011 15:59

SCOTTISH director Lynne Ramsay has staked her claim to top honours in Cannes as critics lined up to shower praise on her latest film, We Need to Talk about Kevin.

It remains to be seen if Ramsay, with the only British film among 20 in contention for the festival's prestigious Palme D'Or, can follow in the footsteps of Hollywood greats at Cannes.

However, the film, starring Scottish actress Tilda Swinton as the grieving mother whose teenage son carried out a school massacre, was the talk of the festival.

Ramsay, 41, described We Need to Talk about Kevin as "a psychological horror film".

"There's no violence in this film," she told reporters after its first festival screening. "You only see aftermath. Every Hollywood movie is more violent than this."

Swinton stars as Eva, a woman numb with grief and guilt, constantly replaying her son's childhood for clues about why he went on a murderous spree, and whether she was at fault.

"It's like a nightmare scenario, but it's not that far from the everyday experience of being a parent," said Swinton, whose unflinching performance was said to make her an early favourite for Cannes' best actress trophy.

"It's a bloody business, having a family," said Swinton, the mother of teenage twins. "It's certainly a very bloody business being a parent, and it's a really bloody business being a child."

Ramsay made a splash at Cannes in 1999 with her grittily poetic debut feature, Ratcatcher.

• Film review: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Her second, 2002's Morvern Callar, also won praise, but she then spent five years working on an adaptation of The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's novel, before the film was handed to Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson.

Kevin is her first feature in nine years. "I've made three films in my head" since then, she said, "so it feels like a seventh film for me."

With Ramsay saying "the whole film is about guilt", it has made uncomfortable viewing for some audiences. But Variety magazine described the film as "an exquisitely realised adaptation" of the best-selling novel by US writer Lionel Shriver about a fictional school massacre.

The Hollywood Reporter, another benchmark, singled out Swinton for "a tour-de-force performance in an impressionistic film about guilt, regret and loss".

But it was more cautious on the chances of wider success. The publication predicted a "distinguished ride" on the film festival circuit but a "tough sell" in theatres.

The 64th Cannes Film Festival kicked off 11 days of screenings with Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. Robert de Niro, star of Taxi Driver, which won the Palme d'Or for Martin Scorsese in 1976, heads the judges for the awards this year.Other past winners are Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers.

Favourites this year include The Tree of Life, a coming of age drama by director Terrence Malick, and Drive, by Nicolas Winding Refn, an American thriller.

Kevin has a Scottish director and star but is set in the suburban US and features American actors John C Reilly, as Eva's well-meaning husband, and 18-year-old Ezra Miller as Kevin.

Ramsay was wary yesterday of comparisons to other films that deal with youth violence, such as Gus van Sant's Columbine-inspired Elephant, which took Cannes' top prize, the Palme d'Or, in 2003. "Elephant is a film about a high school shooting," Ramsay said. "This is a film about a mother and son."

Co-screenwriter Rory Stewart Kinnear, Ramsay's husband, said the film goes where many fear to tread. "I think the idea of a mother not loving her son is one of the last taboos, and something people don't want to talk about," he said.

Film buffs will be watching to see if We Need to Talk About Kevin gets its first UK airing in the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which launches its programme from Cannes and Edinburgh next week.