| Summary: | So bleak is Scottish cinematic history in terms of women directors that Lynne Ramsay’s award-winning Ratcatcher (1999) was only the second Scottish feature directed by a woman. This paper focuses on a range of marginalities (marginal discourses, communities, representations, filmic strategies, etc.) in Ramsay’s first two feature length films: Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar (2002). The discussion pertaining to Ratcatcher explores the ways in which Ramsay gives voice to a marginalised community in Glasgow, whilst also offering the spectator an alternative image of femininity than that which still prevails in British social realist film. Then, focusing on Morvern Callar, attention is accorded to the marginal, alternative and experimental strategies engaged in by Ramsay as a filmmaker, notably soundtrack and fluidity of the gaze, and the power of reception-transformation is touched upon. Finally, the formal and diegetic motifs relating to the expression of personal and cultural exile—other forms of marginality—provide the opportunity, through a focus in particular on framing and identity, to draw together lines of connection between the films, and reflection on the transient and multiple characteristics of marginality.
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