Morvern Callar

Year: 2002

Grade: D

Country: UK

Director: Ramsay

Review

at first my review was going to go something like this: “this film produced: one smile, zero laughs, zero tears, three thoughts and three boners.” but then i decided that i should justify myself a little. the first twenty minutes are painfully slow. the title character discovers that her boyfriend has committed suicide and written a novel for her. she wanders around for a day or so so to think. she goes to work and a christmas party as usual where she ends up telling her friend that her boyfriend left the country and is never coming back. eventually the smell gets to be too much for her so she disposes of body like any right-minded person – by hacking him up, putting the parts in a duffel bag and burying it in the country. she claims authorship of the novel her boyfriend wrote and submits it to a publisher. she takes some money out of his bank account (he told her it was okay) and then leaves the country with her friend. the publishers love “her” novel and offer her 100,000 pounds (oh, it takes place in scotland) for it. so maybe the movie is about good things coming from death, or going on despite death or ….i don’t honestly know, but it didn’t do anything for me. there were shades of “lost in translation” here, sophia coppola probably loved this movie. i should be honest here…i was completely uninterested after seeing the first fifteen minutes and that adversely affected the entire film. i just read the allmovie.com review for it…within the first fifteen minutes i had this pegged as the sort of film reviewers would describe as a “tone poem.” sure enough, that’s exactly what they called it on allmovie.com. i’m not sure what qualifies as a tone poem in film, but i think it’s when the film makes me sleepy and emphasizes style over substance.