Palm Springs International Film Festival focus: 'Kevin' is every mother's nightmare

If you search online for photos of Tilda Swinton, you'll find one, from the 2008 Academy Awards, that particularly delights the actress. She won the supporting actress award that night for playing a squirmy lawyer in “Michael Clayton,” but that's not why Swinton ebulliently brings up this photo of her and a young mystery man.

“I was with the Coens (directors Ethan and Joel) and Fran McDormand. Their son (Pedro) was with them. Pedro and I were standing together. There were some photographers there. I put my arm around him and we had some photographs,” says Swinton. “If anyone mentions my son, this photograph of Pedro is brought out.”

She pauses for effect and gestures to her own ivory complexion and carroty crop. “How did that happen?” wonders Swinton, herself the mother of twins Honor and Xavier, 14, who have never been to an awards show. “Pedro is incredibly good-looking, of South American descent. My son could not possibly look less like him. Pedro is his stand-in.”

Swinton, meanwhile, is promoting her newest film, “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” a jarring story about a child who grows up to be a serial killer, screening at 7 p.m. today at the Annenberg Theater. The film is based on a 2003 Lionel Shriver novel, which is written entirely in flashback, in a series of letters that haunted mother Eva pens to her husband about the titular sociopath Kevin, who has gone on a killing bender. The performance earned Swinton, 51, a National Board of Review award for best actress, and has garnered Oscar buzz.

The movie is neither “social commentary” nor “social science,” cautions Swinton. “It's phantasmagoria. It's mainly about one woman's mind. We don't even know how much of this is true. It's not about truth,” says Swinton. “It's about her wallowing and drowning in a whole array of fantasy and memory.”

The role of Eva is hardly sympathetic, and the film plays as something of a horror story, ferreting out the unspeakable fears of expectant mothers: What if you don't connect with, or love, your child? Swinton, who speaks of her twins with deep affection, was no different.

“I know there was this possibility. Somehow my unconscious kept it from me while I was pregnant. Before I had children, I had assumed, like people do, that maternal instinct will kick in. You'll give birth and it will be about fluffy bunnies and bed jackets,” she says. “And a little bit of tiredness, but only the tiredness you had after parties. Not tiredness beyond anything you had imagined.”