Kissed is the story of a young woman’s emotional and sexual self-discovery through her espousal of necrophilia; as you might expect, it’s not always easy viewing.

We begin with Sandra aged 12 or so (played well by Natasha Morley), sneaking out of her bedroom at night to hold funerals in the woods for dead birds. She grows up distant from family and other people. Around the time she meets Matt (Peter Outerbridge), she gets a job as trainee mortician and things get a bit visceral; an accomplished preparatory dissection scene in the mortuary complete with stabs, cuts, squirts and various noises will make most viewers wince. Sandra - by now played sympathetically, and very credibly, by Molly Parker - starts a sexual relationship with Matt while also sneaking out at night to the mortuary for more fulfilling sessions with the male cadavers. Matt’s upset. There’s a refusal to judge Sandra’s behaviour as transgressive. She’s shown as determined, courageous, natural and true to herself in a way that Matt isn’t, and Parker’s beauty helps to keep the film warm and sensitive throughout. In fact, Kissed isn’t as visceral and shocking as it could be; Stopkewich confidently walks the fine line between copping out and distracting its audience by grossing them out. A particular scene, involving Sandra dissecting a corpse for the first time, was pulled ‘back from what the real experience would be, and what the real sounds would be. Because I didn’t think people could take it. So we made it happen off-camera, to diffuse the visceral-ness of that scene.’

Appearing as, in many ways, a straight love story complete with romantic haloes of soft, white light and much tenderness, Stopkewich’s debut feature cost just $80,000. You couldn’t guess. Every element - direction, design, editing, photography, the screenplay (by Stopkewich and Angus Fraser, from a short story, ‘We Seldom Look On Love’ by Barbara Gowdy), you name it - is spot on, adding up to an evocative, erotic spectacle which, along with the odd laugh and the minimal plot helps to make it so provocative about self-expression, sexuality, even fear of death.

It’s about time, in these Hollywood obsessed days, that we had a rites-of-passage film that doesn’t propagate dumbed-down consensus values. For many, emotional and sexual maturity looks out of place or even shocking. That’s probably why The Daily Mail didn’t like it, and its release on video (uncut) so soon is a pleasant surprise. It took long enough to reach the cinema: made in 1996, it was sat on by the BBFC, who made it wait for a cinema classification before passing it uncut. As Stopkewich (who doesn’t define herself as a feminist) says: ‘Female sexuality in general is exceptionally threatening. And in film every time you see a woman who is sexually aggressive she has to be punished for it. This woman is sexually self-determined. It’s not PC, but taking control is an act of aggression. Because if you don’t take the control, someone else will.’