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Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) awakens on Christmas to find that her boyfriend has slit his wrists. He has left her a note saying he's sorry and tells her to get the novel on his computer published. She leaves the body there, takes his ATM, goes out on the town with her friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), does a bunch of drugs and gets laid. She then takes the manuscript, puts her name on it and sends it off. She gets an advance from the publishing company and before they go on holiday to Spain, she cuts up the body in the bathtub and buries it in a field. She now has a new life. Who is Morvern Callar? What kind of person goes out to celebrate while the Christmas lights in her apartment flash on the cold body in the hallway? Samantha Morton embodies the enigma perfectly in this film. Morally ambiguous to say the least, she takes the character deeper than the somewhat artificial playground she finds herself in. Samantha Morton's character is a loner, both unconventional and ethereal. She's very subtle and plays the character as someone you wouldn't normally notice, but here you can't help but watch every move. She's not the life of the party but she's in the crowd, observing everyone, guarding her own emotions. It's hard to know what's happening to her, only that she's wounded and private. She is at once present with the audience and totally absent from reality. Because her performance is so intense, so penetrating, the plot of the film is necessarily secondary. Her performance and the soundtrack are vital to the success of the film. The use of music is very deft. Her boyfriend has given her a mix tape that serves as the soundtrack, at times pulsating, at times heartbreaking, but always perfectly conveying the hidden emotions of the main character. "Some Velvet Morning" by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra plays as she walks through the supermarket for her meaningless job, and it's the perfect mixture of finding the surreal in the ordinary. "Some velvet morning when I'm straight/I'm going to open your gate": i.e some velvet morning when all this is over, maybe I'll be happy, she seems to say. In the bathtub scene, The Velvet Underground's "I'm Sticking With You" adds an almost comic touch to the horror at hand. Otherwise, it's modern electronic music that takes over, from bands like Aphex Twin. The cinematography captures the drearily beautiful. A bloody foot in the kitchen, a burst of sunshine and blue skies in Ibiza after the drabbiness of Scotland, Morton lying in the bathtub in a fetal position: all can almost be dissected as a series of artistic photographs. Some of the images are unforgettable and stunning in their simplicity. In her underwear, wearing sunglasses and downing brandy, she listens to her walkman and dismembers a body. A scene that is so grotesque but somehow manages to be eerily lovely. Rebirth for Morvern Callar means the burial of someone else. When she carries the body and buries it in a meadow, it's her renaissance. She puts him in the cold yellow ground as she dons a red cap and faces the bluest sky shown in the film. Here she almost seems joyful. From the way her hands stroke the budding branches of a tree it's obvious that she has a new beginning and she transmits this feeling of hope to the audience. Redemption of character can come under the most improbable of circumstances. For Morvern Callar, whose existence did not seem promising, she takes a selfish act of suicide and turns it to her advantage. Without hurting anyone directly, she takes what little opportunity to escape is offered and does just that: she escapes completely. Morals are not part of this picture and the amoral is shown in a new light.
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