Morvern Callar
Morvern Callar
R | 20 December 2002 (USA)
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After her boyfriend commits suicide, a young woman attempts to use the unpublished manuscript of a novel and a sum of money he left behind to reinvent her life.

Reviews
Exoticalot

People are voting emotionally.

Matrixiole

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

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Kaelan Mccaffrey

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

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Philippa

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

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dierregi

A guy commits suicide at home. He was an unpublished author, but his first novel is completed. His girlfriend cuts the body into pieces, bury the pieces into the woods and then sends his novel to a publisher, pretending it's her work, even if she's basically illiterate.She gets a fat check for the novel (which was obviously a masterpiece) and lives happily ever after, after a stupid trip to Spain. Or she goes to Spain before getting the money.... I don't remember and really don't care.I would not even discuss how morally repugnant this Morvern character is, with her disposing of her lover's body in such a way. Also stealing a dead person's legacy work is pretty repulsive. However, skipping over the disgusting main character - of which we see far too many in contemporary movies - the storytelling technique was a mix of boring and insufferably pretentious, that made me swear never to watch any other movie made by this director ever again.

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tsimshotsui

there's something incredibly satisfying and refreshing about seeing a female lead character be unabashedly flawed. Morvern Callar is faced with something huge, and is told to Be Brave. And that's what she tries to do — but not necessarily with choices we would agree with or find right. She makes incredibly selfish, sometimes greedy choices that, if I'm being honest, I would have entertained if faced with the situation. The film is great with exploring what happens if we made the choices we are tempted to make but decide against.

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ric_strebu

SPOILERS---- I just finished watching the film, now I'm able to take a breath, recover from an extremely boring experience and state the facts about the first part of the story and the main character:A girl who's partner just committed suicide. She buries herself in denial by ignoring the dead body in her apartment and partying with her friend. When she finally faces the fact, she steals her dead boyfriend's manuscript ("which he wrote for her") and cuts the body in pieces. As you read these past lines you would probably think (as I do) that this story is really interesting. And it is. The character seems so complex, such a mystery. Well, this great idea is just WASTED with the film. SUPER SPOILER ALERT: nothing happens. The characters aren't given the opportunity to change, face obstacles, or face themselves at all. The little conflict that could arise is solved so easily and automatically that you can barely notice. You could argue that the author did not wanted to go with the "usual" Aristotelian story road. But, if you want to be that "bold" or "artistic", you need to find well thought solutions to the problems that arise from "alternative" storytelling. This movie doesn't. Uses of stereotypical concepts such as "the exotic country" with the "their exotic customs" or "the girl that notices the little things and is not burdened with normality" cheapen the film. Also the dodging of conflict like the written work of the dead boyfriend being "magically a great piece of work" and the publishers who "do not question the girl's veracity" just contribute to the film being of low credibility. So as I watched, I simply believed less and less in the story and of course, stopped caring for the character and whatever happened. The language of the images I think does not add anything to the story, they simply say: this is a cheap production, or translated in some interpretations: "this is a cool independent look". I think more thought and effort could have been given to the cinematography. In my opinion, this movie is a must see to get a great example of how to make a film absolutely disengaged from your audience. In conclusion: Anybody that says this film is "a revelation of the bohemian slums", "an honest inspirational take on death" or "a revolution of images...yada yada", would be the exact equivalent of someone in a modern art exhibition venerating a sponge sitting on an anvil while they fix the position of their monocle. Great acting.

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sol1218

(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.

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