Scene summaries

Act 1

Scene 1

The movie We Need to Talk About Kevin starts with a shot of curtains blowing in the night breeze from an open balcony with the faint sound of cheerleaders chanting and garden sprinklers. The image slowly fades to white and then we see aerial shots of people participating in a tomato fight. Eva is being carried above the crowd’s heads and then lowered and covered with the tomato sauce filling the street. The puddles and splatters of tomato sauce look like blood and the audio sounds chaotic and does not match the scene. 

Eva wakes up on the couch of her run-down house to the sound of liquid dripping. She goes outside to see that red paint has been splattered all over her house and car.

Eva remembers being in a much nicer house and walking towards a little blonde girl, her daughter, Celia, who was eating breakfast at a kitchen island and singing. Celia had an eye patch over her left eye. Eva watched Franklin dance with Celia in the kitchen. A teenage Kevin arrived and plopped his backpack down on the kitchen island.

Eva plunges her face into water. Her face morphs into Kevin’s for a second. She looks at herself in the mirror and the face is her own again. 

Scene 2

Eva leaves her house and drives off, struggling to see through the paint splattered windscreen of her car. She goes into a travelling agency that is holding interviews to hire people. Most people inside ignore her. 

Eva remembers being at her desk at work. In a voice message, she told Franklin she wished to talk to him without the kids as she wanted to work out the problem between them. She told him she missed him. A siren could be heard in the distance. Eva looked outside the window. People seemed to be watching her. Eva ran out of the building, her blood rushing in her ears. She looked distraught. Eva arrived at the school to find crowds of people, journalists, and police crowded all around. She made her way to the front and was shocked by what she saw. A woman next to her was similarly distressed.

A woman calls Eva in for the job interview. When they hear her name, everyone in the travel agency turns to look at Eva as she walks past. In the office, a woman flips through Eva’s CV. She tells her she does not care who Eva is or what she has done so she will give her the job as long as Eva is competent. Eva thanks the woman many times and leaves.

Outside, Eva looks happier. She runs into two older women, one of whom tells Eva she looks like she is having a nice time and then punches her in the face. The woman tells Eva she hopes she rots in hell and calls her a bitch before walking off. The other woman she is with comforts her. A man comes and asks Eva if she is okay and offers to call the authorities, but Eva does not seem very shocked. She says it is nothing and that it was her fault, insisting she is fine.

Scene 3

Eva arrives home at night after the interview. She sees a streak of blood on her face. Later, Eva is lying in bed and watching the rain make the paint on the house’s windows run. In a voice message, Franklin asks Eva when she is coming home.

Eva remembers being at the tomato festival and kissing Franklin in the rain when they were young. Franklin asked her to promise she would never go away again, and Eva did. She remembers having sex with Franklin...