Someone once sent me a copy of this film and it has been sitting on my hard drive or my cloud, or a disk drive, or some kind of infinite space construction for many years. I am glad I never watched it on my laptop and the first time I encountered it was in the cinema. Even if there was a classic Cinemateca moment when the sound vanished for five minutes. Because, like all Ramsay’s work, Morvern Callar is an immersive, profoundly cinematic experience. Ramsey feels to me like a chef who takes what seems like far too few ingredients and cooks up something completely original and unexpected. As so often, the plot is thin, a tremulous coming of age story, stitched around an unlikely twist. But it is fleshed out with beautiful and brilliant set pieces. A party or a rave or a Spanish village fiesta. The film also makes the most of two lovely performances by Samantha Morton and the lesser heralded Kathleen McDermott, as Morvern & Lanna, two friends who have adventures together. There was a moment when a kid with a Peckham T-shirt made me laugh out loud - has any film better captured that absurd combination of humour and idiocy that has defined British youth culture since the eighties, where self-knowledge goes hand in hand with self-oblivion and the greatest virtue in life is to get properly mashed? Spain became a kind of spiritual home for this way of thinking, that other world where the sun always shines and the party never stops. Somehow the film captures all this with charm and empathy. Ramsay deep dives into a British Scotland a British Spain and a Spanish Spain, and it’s always a trip.
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