Morvern Callar
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A young woman conceals her boyfriend's suicide, claims his novel as her own and escapes on a hedonistic Spanish holiday with her best friend.
Supermarket worker Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) wakes up on Christmas morning to discover that her boyfriend has killed himself. Left behind is a brief suicide note, a mixtape, money for his funeral and a recently completed novel. Inexplicably, Morvern replaces his name on the novel with hers and sends it to his publisher. She also conceals his death from her best friend Lanna and co-workers, instead telling everyone that he has left her and moved overseas. With the funeral money, Morvern invites Lanna to travel to Spain with her, disposes of her boyfriend's body and embarks on a hedonistic Spanish holiday.
Curator’s note
Lynne Ramsay followed up her debut feature Ratcatcher (1999), with an adaptation of Scottish author Alan Warner’s existential novel. Doing away with its first-person narrative, the film becomes an enigmatic exploration of grief and ultimately, liberation. Working again with German cinematographer, Alwin H. Küchler, Morvern Callar is a heady, visual and aural rush.
The film deftly grapples with a character that Ramsay and Samantha Morton imbue with such an unflinching lust for life, that we can’t help but root for her, even if her actions are morally questionable.
Presented on 35mm. Courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.
Join us on September 17 as we launch Fireflies Press' next Decadent Edition: Morvern Callar. Books will be available for purchase from the ACMI Shop.
A work of astonishing delicacy and force.
Fireflies Decadent Editions
In the new volume of the Decadent Editions, Anwen Crawford delves into Lynne Ramsay’s haunting second feature Morvern Callar, adapted from Alan Warner’s novel, to craft a fiercely lucid and poetic exploration of grief, class, women’s authorship and the place of art in our world today.
Anwen Crawford is a Sydney-based writer, visual artist and zine-maker, and the author of No Document (2021) and Live Through This (2015).
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