Lynne Ramsay Talks About Kevin

Cannes 2010 - Filming has begun in Connecticut on the Tilda Swinton-starring adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestselling novel We Need To Talk About Kevin .

Speaking to Variety, director Lynne Ramsay described Kevin as "a wonderful project for me, and completely different from my other work."

It's a fair point, given that the story takes place very much in America and not Ramsay's native Scotland, where her previous work has remained.

Shriver's novel, adapted for the screen by Ramsay and her husband Rory Kinnear, surrounds a fictional high school massacre perpetrated by the title's Kevin (newcomer Ezra Miller).

The events leading up to the shooting unfold through a series of letters from Kevin's mother (Swinton) to her estranged husband (John C Reilly).

Jennifer Fox and Steven Soderbergh are producing and exec producing respectively.

This is not Ramsay's first time adapting an emotionally charged bestseller for the screen - she wrote a script for The Lovely Bones while it was still in manuscript form.

But the novel became a hit, and Ramsay's low-key, intimate adaptation was nixed in favour of Peter Jackson's more ambitious vision when, in her words, "people got greedy."

With a modest $10 million to play with, it's looking unlikely that this adaptation will repeat the The Lovely Bones' mainstream-friendly mistakes, and Swinton is perfectly cast in the difficult, frequently unsympathetic leading role of a mother who struggles to love her son long before he becomes a killer.

We Need To Talk About Kevin is scheduled for release in 2011.

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