Reseñas de la crítica

Lynne Ramsay conjures beautiful images out of the grimness of a council estate in 1970s Glasgow in the middle of a rubbish collectors' strike... It is a touching coming of age film with a remarkable tenderness towards its flawed characters, and an exceptional ability to make the mundane beautiful.

The enigmatic, mysterious and unsettling aura of these traumatic experiences comes, precisely, from the undulating, ever-shifting perspective: this tension is at the core of Ramsay's work as a filmmaker, and it creates a dynamic equilibrium that is among the most rigorous traits of her narrative style.

Be warned that Ramsay is unflinching about everything from children's cruelty and sexual awakening to the neighborhood plague of head lice and rats. Some may find such wrenching realities shocking, if not reprehensible. Others may glean meaning in their starkness -- a meaning that transcends the film's despair with the power of its truth.

In "Ratcatcher," [Ramsay's] artistic project is to create a cinema that brings together both the social and surreal, allowing the audience into the fantastic world of the young protagonist’s imagination... [The film's] willful, measured naïvete—balanced with a rigorous pursuit of vision—is precisely what allows the wonders and horrors of childhood to filter through her art, undiluted.

It's a depressing film (though not joyless), and it's difficult to recommend something so agonizing to watch. But writer/director Lynne Ramsay... still produces poetry in all this devastation.... "Ratcatcher" is an inner-city tragedy that plays its story simply, sorrowfully, and beautifully.

“Ratcatcher” is not only made with unhurried artistry and unblinking assurance, it also combines two very different and usually mutually exclusive kinds of filmmaking... With her ability to give every moment its correct emotional weight and an unwillingness to trespass on the realities of lower-class life, Ramsay shows the kind of empathy and concern that is heir to [Ken] Loach’s. But, and this is especially rare for socially conscious directors, Ramsay also has a remarkable visual imagination, a gift for putting vivid, poetic images on the screen.

The hurt and unspoken pain in James' eyes make you want to feel close to him, but Ramsay's episodic, imagistic approach keeps us from getting to his core. Her technique takes the place of his voice instead of articulating it. The cruel realizations that Ramsay piles on James at the end of the film feel plausible and accurate but not emotionally earned.

Although ''Ratcatcher'' flirts with misery, and its palette is principally a series of glum earth tones with an occasional vivid splash of color, the immensely talented Ms. Ramsay provides an intimacy that is completely mesmerizing. Rarely has physical wretchedness been rendered with such delicacy.

Bare of sentimentalism, and oozing raw authenticity from every dirty pore... Ramsay evokes the strangeness of the everyday world, and through [William] Eadie's melancholy eyes lets us experience the snuffed dream and waking nightmare of a tragic adolescence.

All the key elements here — from the dirt-poor milieu to the family of scruffy kids, hard-drinking father and tough, good-hearted mother — are familiar from countless British kitchen-sink dirges. But there’s a light touch in evidence, balancing the bleakness with odd lyrical moments and unexpected humor and tenderness that infuse the gentle drama with a bracing freshness.

[One] of the toughest, least sentimental films about growing up ever made in Britain... Ramsay has found a confident style; she's not just a promising first-time director, but a fully-fledged visionary from the start.