| Morvern Callar | 
 enlarge | Director: Lynne Ramsay
Actors: Samantha Morton, Kathleen Mcdermott, Linda Mcguire, Ruby Milton, Dolly Wells
Studio: Lions Gate
Category: DVD
List Price: $24.98
Buy Used: $1.99
You Save: $22.99 (92%)
New (5) Used (22) from $1.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  46 reviews
Sales Rank: 72564
Format: Color, Dolby, Widescreen, Surround Sound, Digital Sound, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 97
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 159435071X
UPC: 031398107545
EAN: 9781594350719
ASIN: B0000DJYNI
Theatrical Release Date: 2002
Release Date: December 16, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
Eerie, morbid, yet somehow life-affirming, Morvern Callar stars the superb Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown, Minority Report) as the title character, a young Scottish woman whose boyfriend has just killed himself, leaving behind a cassette of assorted songs and an unpublished novel. Instead of reporting his death, Morvern puts her name on his novel before sending it off to a publisher, then uses the dead man's bank card to pay for a trip to Spain with her friend Lana (Kathleen McDermott), where she tries to lose herself in sensation and chaos. The events of Morvern Callar suggest a story, but director Lynn Ramsay (Ratcatcher) focuses on moments of ambiguity and ambivalence in between the dramatic action--and when Morvern does take decisive action, her choices are unnerving. The movie's striking images and rich use of color vividly capture a dislocated state of mind, when life has come unmoored from meaning. --Bret Fetzer
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| Customer Reviews: Read 41 more reviews...
 Credit for acting but not for much else August 30, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The cast is quite good in this film, and perhaps some of the music, but the rest of it is unfocused, plodding, and trying to look artsy and mesmerizing by having no sound at all in the early scenes and then showing the main character examining twigs or windows or other things, as if it were meaningful to do so.
It's also impossible to be interested in the protagonist, who disposes of her suicidal boyfriend's body after leaving it in their flat for a while so she can go out and party for the sake of distraction. Then she replaces his name on his novel with hers, gets it accepted and gets the money and credit that should have gone to him.
Later, she drags her best friend out of a hotel in Spain, gets them lost in the wilderness and then abandons her pal.
Sheesh!
confused August 2, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm not sure why one is supposed to like or sympathise with the protagonist . She performs one dispicable act after another . Abandoning her friend in the desert , stealing money for her boyfriend's funeral , lying about the authorship of a novel , not to mention the disrespect of the corpse . An interesting movie worth seeing but the title character is a horrible person and I got the feeling the filmakers wanted the viewer to like her , why , I don't know .
 Trainspotting minus plot, with truncated songs April 5, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Let's skip my usual ostentatious introductory paragraph this time and get right to the heart of the matter -- or rather lack thereof, because Good Lord, I just cannot say enough awful things about this movie.
Let's start with the plot. It opens with a dead body in an apartment and that, honestly, is the MOST EXCITING PART OF THE ENTIRE MOVIE. To save you time, here is a complete and total spoiler of this film: vapid semi-attractive mannequin's boyfriend commits suicide, leaving her money for funeral, a novel he wrote, and a mixtape. She publishes his novel as her own, disposes of the corpse, uses money to go to Ibiza with her equally horrible best girlfriend, and sporadically fast-forwards through the lovingly-crafted mixtape the whole while.
That's it! No resolution, no moral, no point whatsoever. It's like MTV Spring Break with Scottish people. In fact the only redeeming part of the film is the soundtrack, which is used so haphazardly and with such severe editing that you may as well be listening to a Negativland album.
Artsy-fartsy types will laud the film for its cinematography. I'm sorry, but if I want long, ponderous shots of random nonsense, I'll watch Baraka, which at least TRIES to have some sort of depth and sincerity; Morvern Callar has neither of these attributes, and in fact seems to regard them with abject scorn and mockery.
I gave up an hour into this movie, because I honestly DON'T CARE HOW IT ENDS. If this is the sort of garbage Warp Records is willing to license their music to, the underground is in bad shape, jack.
Sucked, really. SPOILERS BELOW, but who cares? March 25, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I would not recommend the purchase of this movie. Why would you let a dead loved one's body lay on the floor for days and just step over it? They never showed Morvern doing any drugs, but I'm sure she had to be on something the way she acted. What normal person chops their lover up and buries them without contacting anyone who might have wanted to know that he was dead.
Was i the only one waiting for Morvern and her "friend" to have sex?
I regret buying this movie.
 Tough to Take January 10, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
"Morvern Callar," a film directed by Lynn Ramsey, is another very dark, very Scottish film made with the assistance of the Glasgow Film Board. It's a multiple prize winner:nominated for 14 awards, it took nine. It's based on a novel by Alan Warner, and might be considered another entry in the tartan noir school of filmmaking: just a bit bloodthirsty; more than a little graphic in its portrayal of young people going about their daily rounds of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
The highly talented Samantha Morton stars as Morvern Callar, a young woman without a future, working as a grocery store clerk in Oban, a picturesque town, full of retirees, on Scotland's west coast. It's a town where futures are not made. She awakes one morning to find her boyfriend has committed suicide. Her behavior then is not what we'd expect; it goes well beyond ordinary denial as we'd conceive it. She spends the funeral money he'd left her to get herself and her best friend from the store to a vacation in Spain; lots of sex, drugs and rock and roll to be found there. She also signs her name to the novel the boyfriend had written, and sets about trying to sell it as he'd instructed on his last disk.
Director Ramsey, in this movie, follows the maxim "Show, Don't Tell." It's intense, frequently color-saturated, particularly in the Spanish scenes, and moves fast. No spoon feeding of what to think, no backstory, no voiceovers, just a close up,unblinking eye on Morvern and company. Her first film, "Ratcatcher," also set in Glasgow, was almost unwatchable in some unbearably dark scenes;evidently she doesn't believe in going easy on her audience.
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