Morvern Callar

CinemaSerf 9/3/2023 7:04:36AM 8.4

Samantha Morton is the eponymous, bored, supermarket check out girl whose boyfriend commits suicide. She hides his body, takes his money - and a book that he had recently completed and along with her best friend, sets off on some travels. Initially around a wet and windy Scotland before heading to Spain for some fun. My issue with this rather dreary introspective is that neither she, nor her pal interested me in the slightest. Morton's performance is actually quite good; and her life of drugs, sex and lack of fulfilment may well have been the depiction of a labour of love from director Lynne Ramsey and co-author Liana Dognini, but as a piece of engaging cinema it fails completely. I don't doubt that there are many people for whom this is a manifestation of their psychological difficulties - an inability to form any kind of meaningful relationship - on any level - with anyone else; but it is presented in such a drab, pedestrian fashion that even some grand cinematography of the Balearic scenery does little to lift it from the doldrums.