Review of Morvern Callar (2002) by Drew S — 24 Nov 2008

Lynne Ramsay's second feature, called simply yet mysteriously after the main character, "Morvern Callar", it's a rare, uncompromising and ultimately moving picture one may open her/himself or close to but from sitting to it with open mind may come great rewards.

The plot is simple: Young, closed-up and somewhat autistic girl (great as usual Samantha Morton) finds a dead body of her boyfriend who commits suicide, leaving her his novel on the computer. After some time, she decides to bury his body and takes off to make a deal with publisher, changing his name on the novel for her own. But why does she do that, and why she changes his name on the book and send it as her own, it's never clear.

Ramsay must've been clearly influenced by Antonioni here, specifically the way he treated his characters, who, as in real life, don't tell each other anything they aren't prepare to say yet, and in many cases-- like in "L'Avventura", or especially in "La Notte"-- never will. Morvern's behaviour is clearly a case to consider, but Ramsay is brave enough to make us go with Morvern through her situation and decide for ourselves how we feel about her actions. She may be unfeeling and egoistic, or she may be affected by the unexpected circumstance so deeply that, having no clue how to progress without her boyfriend-- since she's clearly a girl who can't function on her own-- the only thing she appears to be capable is to continue to run away from what she experieced at the beginning. That way Ramsay touches something very important here, and she shows it without spare explanations: that what we loose, we want to hide from everything and everyone, as if we wanted to hide it from ourselves, and how in the end it makes us even more isolated from everything what we want to hide it from.

Sounds human enough, doesn't it?