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.

(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 Lanna has no idea of what her friend Morvern is really up to in that she keeps James' death from her as well as his unpublished novel.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.

This film is stylish, funny, baffling and enigmatic. And it's all about Morvern for me. She wanders around spookily, and to begin with somehow I thought she was shrewd and wise. And then she seems mindless, childlike, selfish, inconsiderate. I found her unexplained, out-of-place south-east English accent worked remarkable well somehow. It's never spelt out - and I'm left with a character who I think is a bit of both, a contrast and a conflict. I'll never really know of course - almost as if she were a real person. I like that ambiguity.There are other aspects of the film I liked. It's visually quite striking, and some of the freakish stereotype characters are quite scary (the publishers, the loutish lads).I found the dialogue hard to make out at times, and the flow of events at times arbitrary or inexplicable. I, as a great fan of the ambiguous ending, felt a little frustrated at the unfulfilling ending. But it was well worth putting up with these flaws for a film I found quite stimulating.

A dark film, one of the darkest i've ever seen, yet almost comic with its playfulness between the morbidity of the plot and the use of music and camera usage. The soundtrack is also brilliant: you would expect a film with such a dark plot line to stick with the usual musics associated with its theme, however the use of unnaturally cheery music is excellent, and hilarious at some points. this film is an all round work of art, though perhaps a little slow moving for some people's tastes. i however thoroughly enjoyed it, and hope to watch many more films like it. one of the films strongest points has to be its use of camera: the angles, shots and movements are amazing in points, not to mention the scenery used is beautiful. the ironies of life in this film are excellent, and i believe it is an excellent representation of modern life for the working class, and how disturbed a human mind can become.