Anonymous American province: Eva was a restless woman in her youth; now she is a fearful mother about to face the fate of a devastated woman. These are the three phases, appropriately intertwined and unfolded, told and distinguished through three different hair lengths. In the first 20 minutes, it takes some skill to untangle them, but no need to worry; everything will become clear.

Eva must stop, at Franklin's request, to bring Kevin into the world, and her life will be put to the test. Kevin is a child who only knows how to cry and scream; he won't speak, and he will continue the anal phase beyond the expected time, constantly provoking and challenging only his mother. The father doesn't matter to him; he is used only as a means to destroy the maternal target, and this will also apply to his little sister. That maternal figure, who perhaps initially did not desire him, that maternal figure who dared not be aware of bringing a significant life into the world, that maternal figure not deemed worthy of even minimal filial recognition. This seems to be the judgment continuously passed on a fragile mother, full of guilt and paralyzed by the fear of making mistakes. A mother who must be challenged to see if she can react, subjected to an exhausting existential test: the only special thing she would have done is break his arm, leaving a scar—finally a reaction to her son, finally a sign of life, to which Kevin responds with extreme control, lying to his father and protecting his mother from responsibility.

This is what Kevin wants: an active mother who responds to his provocations, simply because he cannot accept that she allowed herself to be chosen, to become a mother, and to continue being one without wanting it...

"Just because you get used to it doesn't mean you like it; you're used to me," is one of his cruel responses to his mother.

Only during a moment of illness does Kevin manage to be close to her, but this is a weakness that will not be repeated. It is a perverse passion between Eva and Kevin: the mother suffers because of the son and cannot win him over to love; the son suffers because of the mother and cannot win her over to life. Kevin wants a protagonist mother, an active, aware mother; he wants a "special" relationship with her.

The reason is that there is no real reason other than a failed encounter of unmet expectations. The final tragedy is now written in a bath of red blood. Eva will ask her son why, and he will say that he thought he knew, but now he is not sure. A film without catharsis, no redemption expected, only infinite question marks:

Are mothers born? Are children a gamble? Is it all the parents' responsibility? How many become parents consciously? Do all those who generate know how to love? How can you understand the distress of your children? Is it just a matter of love? Education? Can neuroscience contribute?

...We Need to Talk About Kevin is what the parents in this story failed to do and what many often fail to do: the incommunicability, the loneliness, the misunderstanding, the inexplicable take over, carving a trench of bewilderment and meaninglessness. This is where, as with Kevin, that gaze that doesn't know where to unleash itself, on oneself or others, is born; those gestures that celebrate the excess of life beyond the allowed measures in the naive confusion of codes until the point where the code of life is confused with that of death. The volume of sensations is either too high or incredibly flat, and where there is no connection to synchronize heart, thought, and action, biographies capable of violent actions without a real motive are born. Kevin doesn't know why he did it and doesn't know what he did; his feeling is atrophic, inexpressive, non-reactive; the events of life pass by without real participation, and thus opens the chapter of the enigma that children become for parents. It gives rise to that psychic fragmentation of identity that lives in the gesture, in the action that confuses the boundary between good and evil, fueled by boredom, the search for excitement, and as with Kevin, the need to provoke, to challenge, to feel alive.

This is a film that corrodes, that absolutizes one perspective while opening infinite others, that provokes reactions, disrupts convictions, sifts through, insults, overwhelms, contaminates, disturbs. It is a story that makes one reflect on the dimension that the contemporary enigma of the parent/child relationship assumes. It does not allow anyone to remain immune; every scene remains tattooed on the skin, every word carved into the bones. The film leaves a scar that has all the characteristics to remain open.

23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice