Morvern Callar (2002)

Admirable film.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is a mystery movie. Morvern Callar's boyfriend has just committed suicide at the start of the film. No reason is initially given as to why a handsome and talented young writer should do this, and the remainder of the movie is dedicated to explaining why he has done so, using the "show, not tell" method. After the first hour in Morvern's company, I was already losing the will to live. I perked up a bit when there was the hope that she might be gored to death during the running of the bulls, but this came to nothing. If I felt that way after an hour or so, no wonder her boyfriend topped himself. He had to put up with the retarded sociopath 24/7.Morton is a competent actress, but she has appeared in some real dross. This one takes the cake.To be fair, the musical soundtrack is not at the same level of competence as the rest of the film. It is worse.

All I ask of films (as opposed to movies, like Harry Potter) is that they take me to a place I've never been.Morvern Callar is played by Samantha Morton. Played is not a good word in this context. Mebbe 'inhabited'? Skin and soul wrapped around? The bare bones of the plot: Girlfriend of suicide makes off with his cash and novel, to her distinct advantage, and goes to party with a workmate in Spain. From such an unlikely premise, great art comes.The viewer is invited to contemplate the loss of her boyfriend - and it is a loss, the character just has a grotesque and odd way of dealing with it - and how she reinvents herself afterward. There are long moments in the film when nothing seems to happen; when the blankness of her face is an invitation to figure out what on earth is going on in her devious little mind.This movie takes the words 'moral ambiguity' and unemotionally eviscerates them.If you want a movie with a spunky likable heroine, run a mile. If you want some insight into the anomie and wildly swinging moral compass of the younger generation, this may help. If you love movies with little dialogue and a comforting amount of faith that you have the brains and guts to be challenged once in a while, this movie will repay you.I'd give it a ten, but there was an error which I can't talk about because it's a spoiler, an error which was so irritating I had to knock off a point.

(There are Spoilers) Out of the ordinary film about a somewhat whacked out young woman Morvern Callar, Samantha Morton, who's discovery of her live in boyfriend James Gillespie dead in their apartment on Christmas Eve drives her off the deep end.James for some reason killed himself by slashing his wrists just as he finished his great Scottish novel. Leaving instructions on his computer, but not saying why he did himself in, for Morvern James tells her to get his "litereary masterpiece" published as a last favor for him. If she wasn't nuts already, before discovering James dead, Morvern completely losses it not even bothering to report James' death to the local police or health department. This has James lying in the apartment for almost a week slowly decomposing, as well as attracting flies and roaches, where Morvern had to finally get rid of him. She does this ghastly job by chopping James' corpse up into little pieces and dropping them off in the woods outside of town.Now with her wiring James' novel to British book publishers Tom Boddington, James Wilson, and his girlfriend Venessa, Linda McGuire, Morvern plans to get in touch with them in Andulucia in warm and sunny Southern Spain, from cold and damp Argyll Scotland, to see just what they both think of it. Morvern not only sent the novel to the London book publishers but also, something that they don't know, put her name on the manuscript as if she, not James, wrote it.The remainder of the film has Morvern who empties out her late boyfriends James ATM account, of over 3,000 pound sterling, together with her best friend Lanna, Kathleen McDermott, traveling to Spain for a long vacation. Lanna has no idea of what her friend Morvern is really up to in that she keeps James' death from her as well as his unpublished novel. Lanna doesn't know that she's only going along with Morvern just to keep her company until she contacts Tom & Venessa who by now are very interested in having her ,or really James, book published. We have a number of sexual escapades with Morvern and Lanna with some young men they meet at a local hotel in Spain with Morvern getting seriously involved with the boy from hotel-room #1022, Raife Patrick Burchell.Raife had just learned that his mother passed away and Morvern hearing him sobbing in his hotel-room offers him comfort, as well as sex, to ease his terrible loss. It seemed to me that Morvern saw in Raife the same loneliness and depression that she's now suffering from because of her lover, James Gillespie, suicide.It's later when Morvern has Lanna rush out of the hotel, with only her underwear on, for a taxi ride into Central Spain that Lanna finally realized that her good friend is on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. Leaving Lanna alone, with enough cash to get back to Scotland, Morvern finally gets in touch with Tom & Vanessa about her book that their so impressed with. It's then when Morvern starts to get second thoughts in what she's doing, stealing James manuscript. But with the 100,000 pounds sterling advance for her, or James, book offered by Tom & Venessa has Morvern suddenly change her mind.****SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON****Half baked ending with Morvern back in Argyll Scotland, with a check for 100,000 pound sterling, getting in touch with a surprised Lanna at the local watering hole. Offering to take Lanna on another European tour Morvern is rebuffed by Lanna telling her that the boring life in Argyll is just find with her. Lanna seems to have had enough of Morvern and her hair-brained ideas of what a good time really is. Alone with Lanna not there to share her money with her Morvern is last seen sitting on the dock of the railroad station waiting for the train to pull up and take her for a long ride out of town.Despite having a very confusing story that just goes on and on without, in most scenes, making any sense at all "Morvern Callar" has some of the best and eye popping, mostly in the scenes in Spain, cinematography I've ever seen. It's for that and that reason alone that "Morvern Callar" is more then worth watching and sitting through.

Loved the soundtrack. Once the CD enters my stereo system, it stays there for a long time. I had seen the movie before I became familiar with the CD and I remembering not liking the movie too much.Anyways I decided to give the film another chance purely based on my fondness for the songs. Unfortunately I was left sorely disappointed. Most of the song play only for a few seconds and almost half of the soundtrack is played by the time the first party is over and by the 26 minute mark almost 3/4th of the soundtrack is already played, which leaves another 60 minutes of drab movie to wait for the next track. Nannou is the only track that is played completely and that too is during the credits.Soundtrack lovers better keep away from the movie, it disappoints. 2 stars for the great music.