Tilda Swinton is 'Kevin's' troubled mom

Here's the thing about "Rosemary's Baby" -- she may have given birth to the devil, but nobody blames Rosemary.

The same can't be said for poor Eva Khatchadourian, a suburban mom who happens to spawn one of those kids nobody likes to hear about -- the kind who goes off on a high-school killing spree.

What leads to that horrific event, and what follows, is chilling territory explored in "We Need to Talk About Kevin," a new film starring Oscar winner Tilda Swinton ("Michael Clayton") that hits Long Island theaters Friday.

In the film, which is based on the 2003 bestselling novel by Lionel Shriver, Swinton plays Eva, a successful career woman whose life is upended by a surprise pregnancy. She's got an even bigger surprise in store once she has the child and feels . . . little. Or maybe nothing. It's not terribly clear because Eva can't really admit it to anyone -- not her sappy, pie-eyed hubby (John C. Reilly) or herself.

After all, this may be the 21st century, and women may have all kinds of options, but there's one absolute that still comes with being female -- it's assumed you'll eventually want to have kids. Even if you don't really like kids all that much. Don't worry, pretty much everybody tells you -- it'll be different when you have your own. Just wait and see.

But . . . what if it isn't?

"Maternal instinct is not inevitable," says Swinton, but to admit that is taboo. "You can go through all that gestation and childbirth, you can look at that baby and it can just not kick in. And that's a true nightmare."

Ambivalent about kids

When Shriver wrote the novel, she knew such women were out there, feeling ambivalent about motherhood. She was one of them.

"I worried that even if I decided to have kids, the ambivalence wouldn't go away," Shriver told Salon.com in 2003. She kept expecting to be struck by some "biological bolt of lightning," but by the time she hit her 40s, she realized no bolt was headed her way. Concerned that such ambivalence might prove toxic to a child, she opted not to have children.

"If a woman isn't ready to have a baby, she shouldn't have a baby -- it's as simple and as complicated as that," says Dr. Jill Maura Rabin, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine. "A lot of people think it's automatic: 'Oh, we're married, we'll have children.' But it's important to stop and think about what you're doing."

For Swinton, who is the mother of teenage twins, maternal feelings kicked in early. She counts herself lucky that she was given enough "chemical mojo" to get through the "car crash of looking after them for the first few years," says Swinton. "The idea of going through that without that chemical? I don't know how people do it."

Effect on children

The difficulty some women have accessing maternal feelings is not something many will talk about, Rabin admits. In an effort to get them to open up, she often refers patients to therapists at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks. But what effect this lack of feeling has on the children is unclear.

It's rarely addressed in popular culture. Films like "The Bad Seed" (with its cherubic killer), "The Omen" (Damien) and "The Good Son" (a psycho Macaulay Culkin) usually focus on the child as a freak of nature. Lyrics in the Pearl Jam ballad "Jeremy," about a picked-on, Dylan Klebold-type student who commits Columbine-style violence, mention briefly how "Daddy didn't give attention to the fact that Mommy didn't care."

Not that a child's brutal acts are inevitably Mom's (or Dad's) fault.

"In our culture, blaming your parents for everything that's wrong with you is a national sport," Shriver observed. She calls that "petty and unfair."

"Kevin," the novel, is told in a series of letters that Eva writes to her husband; "Kevin," the movie, reveals the story in a jumble of memories, some less accurate than others. Kevin is seen as a moody toddler (played by Rock Duer), manipulative 8-year-old (Jasper Newell) and evasive, icy teen (Ezra Miller).

Off-screen killings

The massacre itself is never played out on camera. Instead, director Lynne Ramsay offers up more mundane, familiar woes -- from the diaper-changing table to a kitchen with a screaming newborn.

"The most difficult thing was keeping the energy really uncomfortable," says Swinton. "Trying to keep that feeling of disconnection going. We never wanted to feel that moment where one person has really heard somebody and said what they really wanted to say."

People who say all the right things? Too Hollywood. This film, she explains, tries to reflect real life.

Case in point -- that kitchen scene where Eva holds a screaming baby . . . who just won't stop. Moms in the audience may find themselves nodding.

In a film chock-full of intense subject matter, that scene may have been one of the most challenging, Swinton admits.

"It's really, really, really tough to hold a screaming baby at arm's length," she says, chuckling. "I'd challenge anybody to do it."

The chronicles of Tilda

BY JOSEPH V. AMODIO, Special to Newsday

Scotland's Tilda Swinton is known for compelling performances in unusual works, including:

ORLANDO (1992) -- Played the ageless, androgynous title role in this Sally Potter film based on the Virginia Woolf novel.

THE MAYBE (1995) -- A performance art piece in which she lies asleep in a glass case; 22,000 observers caught her snoozing in London, later in Rome. She plans to revive the work soon.

THE BEACH (2000) -- She's a tough chick commune leader, with Leonardo DiCaprio.

THE DEEP END (2001) -- In this mystery chiller, she's a mom desperate to save her son, who's suspected of murder.

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE (2005) -- Her pale, bleached skin was perfect for the White Witch.

MICHAEL CLAYTON (2007) -- Her portrayal of a tough-as-nails exec challenged by George Clooney won her an Oscar for best supporting actress.