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In last year's "Under the Skin," as a young woman whose mother's death sends her on a destructive sexual odyssey, Morton made one of the most remarkable movie acting debuts ever. She seemed utterly contemporary. Here, in a period film set in rural England, she's no less immediate. You don't catch Morton feeling her way into the character of Eva. From the opening shot of Eva alone in her bedroom lost in a daydream, Morton seems completely submerged in the role. With her curly bob and long woolen skirts and sweaters, Morton could have stepped out of Life magazine. But the way she's tuned into Eva's interior life dispels any phony nostalgia.

Dreaming of Joseph Lees Directed by Eric Styles Starring Samantha Morton, Lee Ross, Rupert Graves, Frank Finlay and Lauren Richardson

When a title announces we're in 1958 it has an almost Brechtian effect. From the look of Eva's Somerset village it might be 1938. The only glimmer she's ever gotten that life could hold something beyond her job as a secretary in a sawmill or (eventually -- inevitably) marriage came in a long-ago visit from her second cousin Joseph Lees (Rupert Graves). A geologist whose job took him traveling the world, who loved art and books, Joseph became a romantic figure for Eva, and remained so even though her family lost touch with him after he lost his leg in an accident.

Only her weekly drawing classes give her any sense of the world Joseph opened to her. But Eva is too starved for physical attention to live entirely in her dreams. And when Harry (Lee Ross), a local pig farmer, sets his sights on her, Eva finds herself open to his whispers that she's the only local girl "who's never been to heaven and back," or to the way he pulls her into an empty schoolroom after her drawing class to play her Peggy Lee singing "Fever" on his portable phonograph.

Harry is one of those jolly joes who's got nothing going for him besides persistence. Not looks -- his prominent nose and jaw seem like the work of a cartoonist -- and certainly not the same curiosity about the world that Eva has. But on some level Eva is amused by the way Harry sets about wooing her, alternately kidding and beseeching, and drawn to the chance he represents to satisfy her sexual longings. He may be a joker but he's dead serious about her.

So Eva agrees to move in with him but, refusing to surrender her dreams, won't agree to marry him. The awful thing about watching Eva and Harry together is that they're one of those complete mismatches that you can foresee surviving for years; she'll become bitter and tight-lipped over all the ways he's fallen short of her expectations, and he'll act more outwardly jovial in an attempt to convince himself everything is fine, all the while becoming more and more needy. But it's not in Eva's nature to be satisfied with less, and all the desires she's kept under wraps spring to the surface when she encounters Joseph at a family wedding.

Along with Sheryl Lee, Morton is probably the best actress to have emerged in this decade. And like Lee she's absolutely fearless. It's not so much that these women disdain the idea of protecting themselves -- in other words, relying on acting shortcuts and tricks -- it's that the idea of protecting themselves seems never to have occurred to them. Each performance is a walk into the flames, a willingness to follow their characters wherever they lead.

Watching Lee or Morton often makes me feel divided against myself, fearful of what lies in wait for characters so unprotected, and dumbstruck by the courage they show in opening themselves up to the extreme emotional states they navigate with such lyrical clarity.

Next page | Caught between duty and desire