Morvern Callar

REVIEW
Two bodies lay sprawled on a bare wooden floor under blinking Xmas lights, one alive and one dead. A suicide note waits on the computer screen. Morvern Callar's (a luminous Morton) first reaction to her boyfriend's death is denial. When asked where he is by her friends at the pub, she replies, "At home. In the kitchen." He took his own life; she takes the novel he wrote for her and looks for a life of her own. She uses the funeral money he left in a joint account to travel from the chill of the Scottish highlands to the warmth of the Iberian desert and back again, creating an odyssey of discovery both baffling and liberating. Director and co-scripter Ramsay makes good use of the book by Alan Warner, fashioning an otherworldly atmosphere from harsh realities and banal commonplaces. Morton is most eloquent in silence as she seems to float above the petty mediocrities of daily life, with actions not always rational but always with an internal logic and sensibility. Morvern Callar is as much poetic as filmic, unnervingly internal and cerebral within stunning visuals and an inventive and surreptitious sound design. Ramsay and Morton combine formidable talents to create a mesmerizing portrait of self-discovery at once surreal, ambiguous and forceful.