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Morvern Callar (2002)
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Reviews Counted:23
Fresh:21
Rotten:2
Average Rating:7.4/10
Consensus: Morton quietly makes this quirky, enigmatic mood piece a compelling watch.
Theatrical Release:Dec 20, 2002 Limited
Synopsis: The role of the aimless young rebel hiding behind an emotional wall and steely eyes has been monopolized by men in the movies since James Dean. Samantha Morton, one of her generation's most gifted... The role of the aimless young rebel hiding behind an emotional wall and steely eyes has been monopolized by men in the movies since James Dean. Samantha Morton, one of her generation's most gifted actors, makes the most of her opportunity to embody such a figure in her role as the title character of MORVERN CALLAR. Momentarily frozen by the suicide of her boyfriend, Morvern mines two words from his brief suicide note: be brave. Finally removing his body from the apartment floor, she buries her boyfriend, pocketing the funeral money he left. She also courts publishers, claiming authorship of the novel he left behind as his legacy. Her new financial freedom and sense of mortality brings Morvern, joined by her coworker Lana (Kathleen McDermott), out of her bleak surroundings to a Spanish resort where the two are surrounded by fellow clubbers. Lynne Ramsay (RATCATCHER) evokes emotion through landscape as Morvern and Lana flee the dreary Scottish winter for a Spanish coastal town bathed in sunlight. Working from Alan Warner's novel, Ramsay uses powerful imagery and a soundtrack vacillating between contemplative silence, abrasive sound effects, and hip music to create a purely cinematic work, avoiding the trappings of an adaptation. [More]
Starring: Samantha Morton, Kathleen McDermott, Linda McGuire, Duncan McHardy
Starring: Samantha Morton, Kathleen McDermott, Linda McGuire, Duncan McHardy, Dolly Wells, Jim Wilson
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Screenwriter: Lynne Ramsay, Liana Dognini
Producer: George Faber, Charles Pattinson, Robyn Slovo
Studio: Cowboy Pictures
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Reviews for Morvern Callar
A film about youthful confusion made without a moment of artistic immaturity or indecision.
With little dialogue to assist her -- just the strains of that wonderfully organic music -- [Morton] still manages to suggest the internal struggle, and to slowly reveal a fierce toughness that flies in the face of conventional morality.
Maintains your sympathy for this otherwise challenging soul by letting you share her one-room world for a while.
Even if both films are about accidental sinners, Morvern Callar turns out to be a very different, and more difficult, film than Ratcatcher.
As opaque as the movie is, it's redeemed by Ms. Morton's superb, disaffected performance.
Appealing? Not exactly. But Morvern Callar ... is a strange and evocative work that's not easy to dismiss.
As Morvern, [Morton is] disconcertingly enigmatic, often bordering on catatonic. But she carries the movie effortlessly.
Ramsay and Morton fill this character study with poetic force and buoyant feeling.
Too often mistaking obscurity for complexity and moodiness for depth, director Lynn Ramsay squanders an intriguing premise and a layered performance by Samantha Morton.
We watch Samantha Morton so closely, with such fascination, because she is able to embody a universe of wounded privacy.
Ramsay, as in Ratcatcher, remains a filmmaker with an acid viewpoint and a real gift for teasing chilly poetry out of lives and settings that might otherwise seem drab and sordid.
Strange, moody film that could easily have seemed like a willful wallow in the macabre but for the odd truth of Morton's performance and the psychologically penetrating direction of Lynne Ramsay.
The director, Lynne Ramsey, works in the tony austere style of Catherine Breillat and Claire Denis.
Flashy, pretentious and as impenetrable as Morvern's thick, working-class Scottish accent.
The wonderfully lush Morvern Callar is pure punk existentialism, and Ms. Ramsay and her co-writer, Liana Dognini, have dramatized the Alan Warner novel, which itself felt like an answer to Irvine Welsh's book Trainspotting.
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