A fascinating companion piece to Ratcatcher, Ramsay's second feature once again tracks the awakening of youthful imagination, now in the figure of a young woman who discovers an impulsive freedom and sense of peace after the sudden death of her tempestuous writer boyfriend. Ramsay's most abstract work to date, Morvern Callar is structured around a boldly elemental symmetry, striking stark contrasts between its vivid yet obscure characters and between the distant locations that trace a dream geography that explores the mist-enshrouded Scottish highlands and sunbaked Spanish pampas as complimentary expressions of the sublime. The keen attention to sound that remains a bold signature of Ramsay's films takes on new dimensions in Morvern Callar in which music is boldly used to create an acoustic subjectivity, rendering an intense first-person perspective that nevertheless keeps a poetic distance from the drifting eponymous heroine brilliantly played by Samantha Morton. – HG