Lynne Ramsay's debut feature Ratcatcher is a gritty but often lyrical portrait of a boy growing up on the wrong side of the Scottish tracks. James (William Eadie) is a 12-year-old coming of age in a rough working-class section of Glasgow. Something of a misfit, James has only two close friends, Margaret Anne (Leanne Mullen), an older girl whose need to be loved often leads her into ill-advised sexual episodes with the neighborhood boys, and Kenny (John Miller), a half-bright kid who loves
animals but isn't sure what went wrong when he tried to send his pet mouse into space. One day, James gets into a fight with another boy near a canal that runs through town. James accidentally knocks the boy into the water and he drowns; James is too scared to tell anyone, but the incident weighs heavily on him, adding further tension to an already strained relationship with his alcoholic father. Lynne Ramsay's previous short films won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, which led to Ratcatcher's being screened in the "Un Certain Regard" series at Cannes in 1999. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Some may find such wrenching realities shocking, if not reprehensible. Others may glean meaning in their starkness -- a meaning that transcends the film's despair with the power of its truth.
Lynne Ramsay bears watching. But when we talk about advances in the art of movies we have to be talking about leaps of feeling, not just leaps of technique.
Writer-director Ramsay has a deft touch throughout: Her actors all seem natural, and her occasional touches of magic realism...help to soften the blows of squalor.
Done so deftly, with such a exquisitely poetic touch and keen understanding of the paradoxical coexistence of filth and beauty in the world, that you can forgive some of its narrative triteness.
This is a film that has always been highly recommended to me and whilst I believe this to be a film that has portrayed a gritty Drama, with a realistic setting and very natural performances, I seemed to have missed the point to the film. the storyline to me failed to deliver a means to an end, which is such a shame
because it's of great quality.
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