MORVERN CALLAR

On Christmas morning, Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) wakes to find her boyfriend dead on the floor, leaving behind a mixtape and a finished novel he wants her to get published. She puts her own name on the manuscript and uses the funeral money to take her best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott) on vacation in Spain.

Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Alan Warner’s novel follows Morvern from a Scottish supermarket to the sunburned excesses of a Spanish resort, finding an unexpected freedom in the aftermath of a death. Morton is extraordinary as a woman whose behavior can be baffling, but whom Ramsay never tries to explain. Her boyfriend’s mixtape, with tracks by the Velvet Underground and Aphex Twin, draws us into a private world where music and fleeting sensations become more absorbing than anything anyone has to say. Few films get so close to the strange pleasure of being alive when your feelings bear no resemblance to what you’re supposed to feel.