****/****
starring Samantha Morton, Kathleen McDermott, Raife Patrick Burchell, Dan Cadan
screenplay by Liana Dognini, Lynne Ramsay, based on the novel by Alan Warner
directed by Lynne Ramsay
by Walter Chaw Scottish director Lynne Ramsay's remarkable follow-up to her remarkable debut Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar edges into the ground ploughed by Claire Denis, fashioning a blend of the feminine travelogue of Chocolat (the 1988 version), the haunted monumentalism of Beau Travail, and the carnal suffering of Trouble Every Day, all merged by Alwin Küchler's brilliantly malleable cinematography. Anchoring Morvern Callar is a breathtaking and courageous performance from Samantha Morton (who, in addition to never appearing to have played the same role twice, also has yet to make a major misstep); the picture is indicated by the kind of absolute confidence that allows for extended periods of silence and the Buñuel-ian image of an ant crawling over a young girl's hand in a Spanish pasture. Morton is Morvern, a woman who discovers her boyfriend dead by his own hand lying in an expanding welter of blood lit by the blinking lights of a sick-looking Christmas tree. On the computer is his brief suicide note and the novel he's just completed–and in the bank account, just enough money to send Morvern and her best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott) to Spain. After, of course, Morvern disposes of the corpse. Drenched with sadness and entropy, Morvern Callar is unhinged and fanged–raw and rough-hewn, and another in Ramsay's slowly growing portfolio of youth smothered by their incapacity for enlightenment.
