If Lynne Ramsay’s first feature, ‘Ratcatcher’, was a lyrical vision of the journey from disappointment and despair to suicide, then ‘Morvern Callar’ charts a course in the opposite direction, from suicide to rebirth and hope of a new life. Based on Alan Warner’s novel, it is a road movie of sorts, and as with all road movies, its story, which is as minimal as can be, is less important than the incidental details and observations which pave the way.

On Christmas day, in Oban, Scotland, supermarket worker Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) wakes up to discover that her partner has killed himself, leaving her a small amount of money for his funeral, and the completed manuscript of his novel. Despite her disorientation and grief, Morvern sees a miraculous opportunity to get away from her past, disposing of the body, spending the money on a two week holiday in Spain for herself and her friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), and submitting the manuscript as her own novel. What starts as a simple, hedonistic escape soon turns into a more profound retreat into seclusion, silence and self-negation, as Morvern, like her boyfriend before her, disappears ‘to another country’, and refuses to go back.

The outstanding Samantha Morton, typecast for far too long as a near-silent idiot savant (‘Sweet and Lowdown’, ‘Minority Report’), is at last allowed to shine in a role of substance and depth. The real star of this film, however, is Ramsay herself, who has transformed the simplest of plots into something oblique, moody and poetic, with a visual style and pace all its own. Others can have their ‘8 Women’ or ‘Santa Claus 2’, but this is my idea of a Christmas film: awkward, melancholic, and alienating.

Anton Bitel, 03.12.02