A year on from Lars Von Trier's scarifying Breaking The Waves comes another picture taken up with a young woman's response to love, loss and sexual abandon. The approach of each is different, but the comparison stands if only because of the completeness of each work within its own rigid perimeters, and the exemplary performances of each lead. And both films inevitably require a large dose of recognition and abandon from their respective audiences: traditional notions of female representation and sexual discipline find no place here.

Samantha Morton plays Iris, a young woman who feels herself emotionally starved by a dying mother (Rita Tushingham) in favour of pregnant sister Rose (Secrets and Lies' Claire Rushbrook). But it's the mother's eventual death that sends Iris into uncharted waters. Rose grieves, but Iris takes to wearing provocatively short dresses and the dead woman's wig, lending herself to dangerous sexual liaisons in local clubs and cinemas. It's an emotional spiral that looks set to take her all the way to hell as the men she picks up become progressively more aggressive.

Feature debutante Carine Adler is about taking some real risks with her picture. Instead of focusing tightly, as we might expect, on the relationship between the sisters, she eventually sidelines Rose in favour of taking us all the way with Iris, the burden of the film falling on Morton's slight shoulders. Standing on her alone, Adler risks ridicule but pulls victory from the jaws of defeat: Morton is fragile, predatory, and terrific. The film neatly sidesteps easy PC-inspired ideas of strong women in favour of something far more ambiguous and, consequently, traumatic.

Stylistically, however, is where Adler chances most: don't come expecting the usual visual platitudes of British cinema. Adler pays homage to Wong Kar-Wai and cinematographer Chris Doyle, not only through visual tricks, but more completely to the Hong Kong director's feel for disconnection and dislocation. Adler even dresses Morton to resemble a character from the acclaimed Chungking Express. The resultant film (brilliantly shot by Barry Ackroyd) carries a huge - if complex - erotic charge whilst remaining surprisingly chaste in its images.

Under The Skin is an easy film to admire but a difficult one to love. If Von Trier betrayed us in his very last image, then Adler's is certainly better: quieter and, while it remains ostensibly optimistic, empty and unresolved. By not electing to kill its heroine, Under The Skin risks finding a way out - with all the attendant guilt and humiliation. Iris never explains herself in terms of simple catharsis, punishment or revenge, which is perhaps the reason why Adler's film stays with you long after the images themselves fade from the screen.