neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Morvern Callar
	Lynne Ramsay Samantha Morton, Kathleen McDermott 2002		With an eye for the daily tragedies that plague ordinary people, writer/director Lynne Ramsay chronicled the despair and dreary prospects of Glasgow tenement life in her award-winning debut feature, "Ratcatcher." Ramsay goes in another direction — internally — with "Morvern Callar," a drama about a journey of discovery and empowerment taken by the title character. Played by Oscar nominee Samantha Morton ("Sweet & Lowdown"), Morvern is a 21-year-old supermarket clerk in a small Scottish town. She wakes on Christmas morning to discover the dead body of her boyfriend under the tree. The suicide note is terse: He has left her the manuscript of his unpublished novel with instructions to send it to a publisher. Her numbed reaction is to grab the corpse's ATM card and proceed as if nothing had happened. She mails out the manuscript. Then, she and best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott) go on holiday to Spain. Both novel and trip will be instrumental in transforming Morvern. The film's pacing is painfully deliberate, but Morton's quiet, subtle performance, with shades of sublimated emotion, pushes it along.