To begin at the beginning: Morvern Callar is a woman's name. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Alan Warner. It starts in tragedy and ends in triumph.
Samantha Morton stars as Morvern Callar, a woman of 21 who works as a supermarket clerk in a port town in Scotland.
Morvern had a boyfriend, but the film opens with the end of that relationship. It's Christmas Day. Morvern opens the gifts her boyfriend has given her, and among them is a new Walkman and a compilation tape of songs he has made for her to hear.
She puts on the ear-phones; for the rest of Morvern Callar, what goes on in the world around our young heroine takes second place to the music only she can hear.
In a way, Morvern's boyfriend has abandoned her. A reference to her foster mother suggests that abandonment has been a constant in Morvern's life. She has a close friend in a woman named Lanna (first-time actress Kathleen McDermott) but you are given to understand from the beginning that Morvern is very much alone.
At any rate, with her boyfriend gone for good, Morvern takes his unpublished novel and puts her own name on it. It's an impulsive gesture, and one born out of the need to survive. When the novel is accepted for publication, Morvern's life changes.
Morvern Callar is a fantastic film, a complex tale (in which very little actually happens) about hope and possibility.
It's a coming-of-age story of a different type -- more like a coming-to-consciousness fable and a dark fairy tale with an unlikely heroine. Faced with an overwhelming situation, Morvern takes things into her own hands and copes as well as she can. In so doing, she discovers that there are many different ways to approach life. And to live it.
Morvern Callar is small and dark and often weird. And often fairly depressing. Thanks to a superb script and a jaw-dropping performance from Samantha Morton, it is also a character study of such acuity that you'll find yourself thinking about it for days afterward.
It is the perfect antidote to all the huge and hollow summer blockbusters. Antivenin. Whatever.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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