Rating: 4/5
The uncomfortable quiet of Samantha Morton lying on the floor next to her boyfriend’s body, dead by suicide, lights on the Christmas tree flickering light and shadow across them. “Don’t try to understand. It just felt like the right thing to do,” his suicide note reads. “Be brave.”
Lynn Ramsey loves her protagonists to be traumatized to the point of making confusing choices — choices that only make sense in her mind, a mind we barely get to know otherwise
Here, the first choice is for Morton to leave the body right where she found it. The next is not to let anyone know that anything has happened as she goes out and parties with friends — “I left him at home.”
“I’ve lost my boyfriend. Have you seen my boyfriend?” she calls out at the party, dissolving into the post-party quiet and the unwelcome reminder
“He’s gone away,” she finally says “He’ll be back,” everyone refrains
“Some velvet morning when I am straight, I will open up the gate. “
The movie is a journey of mourning and reclamation of what selfishness stole, ebbing between meditations on life and decay, disassociation, and the unwanted confrontation of reality — running, always running away
“It’s the same crap everywhere; stop dreaming.”
The movie, at times, slips into some indie clichés — twirling around listening to music, baking and throwing flour everywhere, that sort of stuff — but they tend to live in brief montages, nothing indulgent
Stray Thoughts:
- As much as I love the Scottish accent, I cannae understand it in contemporary movies without subtitles
- They say “fortnight” a few times. I didn’t know that was still in use
- Deeply jealous of how effortlessly she does a cat eye with her eyeliner
- “Morvern, you are so lovely to me,” her friend Lanna says, made me tear up
- Twee as hell 2002 soundtrack, but man, I love some of these songs
- I can only assume “hoovering” used in this context is cocaine, right?