Sometimes all a movie needs is attractive people speaking in beautiful British accents. Mister Foe, which offers up such lovelies as Jamie Bell, Sophia Myles, Ewen Bremner, Ciaran Hinds, and Claire Forlani strapping on a mixture of Scots brogues and Irish burrs, would come highly recommended on that level, even if it didn't also feature genuinely pervy story elements, compellingly complex relationships, a brilliant soundtrack of Scotland's finest indie rock, and a dose of animation by the great David Shrigley. But it does have all those things. And the beautiful actors. And their beautiful accents. Cash back!

Hallam Foe (Bell) is a creepy teenager who wears a skinned badger pelt over his head (which does nothing to spoil his immaculate bangs, it should be noted), paints his face and torso, hangs out in a tree house, and spies on people with binoculars. If those people are having sex, he's not above swooping down from his leafy bough on a zip wire to terrorize them. He does these things because he misses his dead mother, who drowned in the lake behind the stately home he lives in with his stately father (Hinds, perfect as always) and Verity (!!!), his much younger superfox of a stepmother (Forlani). He obsessively believes that Verity murdered his mom and made it look like suicide. This does not stop him from desiring her sexually, which makes for a complicated home life. So much so that Hallam eventually bolts for Edinburgh, where he falls in love—via peeping—with the HR lady at his work (Myles). It doesn't hurt that she looks exactly like his dead mother.

Despite/because of the Oedipal curlicues, Foe is fundamentally a song of innocence and experience. Writer/director David Mackenzie—whose Young Adam was a brutal downer about amorality—mines Hallam's eccentricities not just for oddball comedy but for outré sweetness (Bell's infinitely endearing face helps a lot), which creates a gently, but deeply, moral atmosphere. There are consequences for Hallam's refusal to grow up, but he discovers them on his own. The film never punishes him for discovering that his freakier tendencies are simply who he is.