Something to talk about

We Need To Talk About Kevin, which screens tonight in Competition, may be one of the hottest tickets in town, but director Lynne Ramsay is trying not to feel the pressure.
“I’ve not had a chance to be nervous because I’ve been finishing up the movie,” says Ramsay, who describes the shoot in Connecticut as “the most enjoyable I’ve ever been on”.
Adapting Lionel Shriver’s controversial novel about the parents of a dangerous teenager was never going to be an easy task, but Ramsay knew she wanted to make the film before the book was even published. “I like taking meaty material, risky stuff. And I just thought it was a bloody good story.”
And the result? “It’s not a high-school killing movie at all, it’s a tragedy about a mother and son relationship,” says Ramsay, who describes her lead actor, Ezra Miller, as having something of the “young James Dean about him”.
Her first two features, Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar, both screened at Cannes, but Ramsay and the Croisette go back even further: her graduation film, Small Deaths, won the jury prize for best short back in 1996.
So what’s been her Cannes highlight? “The best time I ever had was the first time, at the Trainspotting party. These days I’m thinking about my next movie, but I still fancy a glass of champagne on the beach.”