The second feature from Lynne Ramsay, whose Ratcatcher attracted some puzzlingly rapturous reviews. For that matter, so has this one, the title of which -- the name of the Scottish heroine, not some untranslated snatch of Norwegian -- is off-putting for different reasons. The film might, or might not, sound more appealing in summary. A bare-torsoed corpse, male, lies in the glow of blinking Christmas-tree lights, within staggering distance of a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. A suicide note to his girlfriend can be found on the computer ("Be brave"), along with his finished but unpublished first novel ("I wrote it for you"). The girlfriend (Samantha Morton, rival to Emily Watson in woeful waifishness) goes ahead and opens her presents, goes into the dead man's pants for pocket money ("Sorry"), goes to a party with her bosom buddy, goes off to her job the next day at the supermarket: a wormy carrot will call to mind the rotting tubers in the corpse-littered apartment of Repulsion. Back home, she steps over the body to warm up a pizza in the oven, changes the name on the manuscript from his to hers, finally gets around to cutting up the body in the bathtub for disposal, and finances a trip to Spain on his ATM card. The novel (did she even read it?) is accepted for publication. How would an advance of a hundred strike her? No reaction. But really, she's assured, a hundred thousand for a first-time author is nothing to sneeze at. The action, so to call it, plays a bit like a modern psychological novel with all the interiority removed. Or else like a dimly imagined item from Page 20 of the daily paper. There are numerous eye-catching images in rough raw garish color, but the carefully composed are alternated with the aimlessly hand-held to a degree that raises questions about Ramsay's identity. With Kathleen McDermott. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd