![]() ![]() ![]() In the parking lot outside, a teen in a wheelchair calls out her name and – unexpectedly – treats her with kindness, an event more shocking than the insults. A male co-worker makes a vile proposition. (Eva's skewed perspective in the book is treated here as objective reality.) A pleasant-looking middle-aged woman approaches her smiling, but slaps her and utters obscenities. When she takes a menial job at a small travel agency, the co-workers are dull-eyed, coarse and hostile. Haunted and lean post-atrocity, Swinton is compelling but miscast, and she sticks out among her boorish American neighbours like a unicorn that has wandered into the cow yard. Sanguine splashes appear in almost every scene of the film, at times absurdly: When Eva stands frozen in front of stacks of tomato soup, there's an odd moment when it seems Andy Warhol must be behind the school killings. Later, she assumes the martyr role, living in a run-down house near the railway tracks amid angry relatives of her son's victims, who splatter her home with red paint while the soundtrack drones old-time work-gang songs. In an early scene we see Eva revelling in the Tomatina tomato-throwing festival in the Spanish town of Bunol, shot from overhead, her red-splattered body being held aloft while she assumes the Crucifixion pose. ![]()
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