Main Cast: William Eadie, Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews, Michelle Stewart, Lynne Ramsay Jr.
Release Year: 1998
Country: UK
Run Time: 93 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Lynne Ramsay's debut feature Ratcatcher is a gritty but often lyrical portrait of a boy growing up on the wrong side of the Scottish tracks. James (William Eadie) is a 12-year-old coming of age in a rough working-class section of Glasgow. Something of a misfit, James has only two close friends, Margaret Anne (Leanne Mullen), an older girl whose need to be loved often leads her into ill-advised sexual episodes with the neighborhood boys, and Kenny (John Miller), a half-bright kid who loves animals but isn't sure what went wrong when he tried to send his pet mouse into space. One day, James gets into a fight with another boy near a canal that runs through town. James accidentally knocks the boy into the water and he drowns; James is too scared to tell anyone, but the incident weighs heavily on him, adding further tension to an already strained relationship with his alcoholic father. Lynne Ramsay's previous short films won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, which led to Ratcatcher's being screened in the "Un Certain Regard" series at Cannes in 1999. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
For her very first feature, director Lynne Ramsay found herself the recipient of an obscene amount of positive press from European critics, so much so that a backlash was inevitable. So it's a relief to report that despite the hype, pro and con, her grim coming-of-age tale Ratcatcher remains a singular moviegoing experience, the kind of film made by a person who composes every shot as if it were her last. Fusing a gritty, kitchen-sink realist drama -- the kind the U.K. film industry has been producing since The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner -- to a haunting, poetic visual style, Ramsay is able to create something uniquely her own. Free of the flash common to turn-of-the-millennium British directors (see Guy Ritchie), Ramsay sketches in details about her main characters in an intuitive, breathtaking manner. Though there is a semi-conventional narrative, tethered to the unreliable point-of-view of a 12-year-old boy, Ratcatcher is much more interested in memory, perception, and fantasy, and how these forces can filter and distill a very real, bleak existence. If anything, Ramsay's debut is reminiscent of Terence Davies' similarly impressionistic first film Distant Voices, Still Lives -- in her protracted use of pop songs, her painterly use of color, and her anti-nostalgic approach to the period piece in general -- but with a major difference: It's not nearly as stifling. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Cast
William Eadie - James
Tommy Flanagan - Da
Mandy Matthews - Ma
Michelle Stewart - Ellen
Lynne Ramsay Jr. - Anne Marie
Leanne Mullen - Margaret Anne; John Miller - Kenny; Jackie Quinn - Mrs. Quinn
Credit
Peter Gallagher - Associate Producer, Gillian Berrie - Casting, Bertrand Faivre - Co-producer, Nick McCarthy - First Assistant Director, Lynne Ramsay - Director, Lucia Zucchetti - Editor, Sarah Radclyffe - Executive Producer, Andrea Calderwood - Executive Producer, Rachel Portman - Composer (Music Score), Alwin Küchler - Cinematographer, Richard Flynn - Sound/Sound Designer, Lynne Ramsay - Screenwriter, Thomas Townend - Second Unit Director Of Photography, Thomas Townend - Second Unit Camera, Thomas Townend - Still Photographer
The film tells the story of James, a 12-year-old boy living in an impoverished Glasgowhousing estate in 1970s Scotland, whose friend is accidentally drowned while they are playing.
Ratcatcher never received a wide cinematic release. It was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection. The review website, Crossover Guide says, "The scene where he climbs out of a window of a newly built house and runs across a field is simply captivating, marking the highlight of a truly beautiful British film."
