a review of 默文·卡拉

This one was a slow burner for me. I took a bit of time to get my thoughts together about it, and it took a few days more before I had time at a keyboard to get them on here. I think the comparison to Boonmee is apt, but the deliberate pace that felt so elegaic and pastoral in that film turns into something more depressive and devastating in this one. I've never lost a lover or even a good friend like Morvern does, but I know what it's like to have the rug pulled out from under your whole life, and then spending what seems like ages in an paralyzed state with no next move that readily suggests itself, a feeling that the movie captures wonderfully in the opening scenes. Whatever her issues might have been with her boyfriend (and I think naju's right on the money with the class/power differential theory) I don't get the sense that theirs was an unhappy relationship, at least not consciously so. She undoubtedly ceded a good deal of her personal autonomy to him in exchange for emotional security, and maybe for him a relationship with a grocery clerk was his way of dodging higher expectations. It was comfortable, or maybe at least not-uncomfortable, and it wasn't until he was actually gone that she realized that he'd trapped her with him. It must also be noted that the pizza that appears onscreen just before Morvern discovers the manuscript is like a literal food-avatar of sadness. I have a feeling that the filmmakers probably went through a lot of depressed-looking supermarket convenience foods before finding the perfect embodiment of Morvern's mental state.