It's the fleeting images and little gestures that make Ratcatcher so remarkable. A pair of glasses at the bottom of a fetid canal. The skinned knee of a teenage girl. A toe poking through the hole of a stocking. A kid sitting happily on a garbage bag as if it were a beanbag chair. Grinning boys swinging dead rats by their tails.

One of the most distinctive debut films of the last decade, this feature by young Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay captures the beauty, terror and confusion in the world of a 12-year-old boy in Glasgow. The director has such a keen eye for the right details that it's hardly surprising to learn she initially studied photography, not film. (It was a viewing of experimental filmmaker Maya Deren's Meshes in the Afternoon that got her interested in movies.)

Ratcatcher has already received great acclaim in the U.K. and the U.S. -- it made the Top 20 for 2000 in a recently published poll of Film Comment writers -- and belatedly returns to town after appearances at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1999 and last year's Britpics festival.
 

Excerpt from Jason Anderson 's film review located HERE