just across the Hudson from New York in the novel; in an unidentified American suburb on screen) the film takes us directly into Eva's mind by abandoning a linear narrative. Instead it employs an advanced form of the mosaic structure developed in the 1970s by Nicolas Roeg, whose son, Luc Roeg, is co-producer of Kevin . Eva is first seen at the centre of some colourful folk event in Spain where everyone is drenched in tomato pulp, and the colour red is carried over into wine, clothes and ketchup. Eva's small clapboard house and the car in front are sprayed with red paint by vengeful vandals. We know in our hearts and retinas that this red will eventually become blood. Brief sequences in the achronological mix establish Eva in a variety of roles. She's the concerned mother of two children (Kevin and his devoted little sister, Celia) with a kindly husband, Franklin (John C Reilly). She's a woman who once lived in a splendid, tastefully appointed country house with plain pine walls and spacious garden but now inhabits a squalid shack. She has terrible memories of a horrendous incident at her son's school and visits the son in a high-security jail. She's become a pariah, warily approached by some, attacked and tormented by others. This portrait of the troubled Eva -- withdrawn, suspicious, steeped in self-mortification -- is brilliantly sustained. There are two narrative and psychological strands in the story. One culminates in a terrible outburst of seemingly motiveless violence.