A swan glides across the water; a woman floats on the surface face down, arms outstretched. For a moment you may expect her to lift her head out of the water and gasp for air, perhaps recoiling from seeing the debris resting on the floor of the canal, garbage discarded haphazardly. But the woman’s dead body is pulled from the drink by two men, and placed on the pier. One arranges her sheer slip to cover her nakedness. These images create a quiet foreshadowing for the simple complexity of a compelling story, about a selfish drifter, his lovers, and a hard working couple that runs a coal ferry barge on a canal in 1950s Scotland.

The cramped quarters of the barge offer no privacy, and natural cracks in the worn wooden walls allow Joe to see Ella and Les trying unsuccessfully to make love. The closeness of bodies on the barge, played out against the true loneliness of the characters, emphasizes the distances between them.

Ella rebuffs Joe at first though she gets the message and before long, while Les is out drinking at the local pub, Joe and Ella are desperately entwined with each other along the mossy shore of the canal; off the barge so they will not wake up her son. Soon, both allow passion to overrule good sense, and they carry on their liaison below while Les navigates the barge topside.

The story unfolds in a non-linear manner, revealing Joe’s affair with a young woman named Cathie (Emily Mortimer), whom he knew before he met Ella. He treated her shabbily, with devastating results, and then moved on. As further evidence of Joe’s easily massaged carnal nature, he literally bangs Ella’s sister in an alleyway, almost immediately after she has buried her husband. It’s interesting to note that with each of these women, Joe hits and runs with the lusty lovemaking at least once outside, in public, where someone could very likely catch them in heat.

Three equally compelling story lines develop. There is, of course, discovering who the dead woman is. Then there are Joe’s amorous affairs, stealing sex wherever he finds it. And the other is Joe’s moral dilemma of what to do when he learns that a man may be wrongfully convicted of murder (and will hang) for something Joe was involved in that was accidental.

The nudity in the film is erotic, in large measure because it is not gratuitous. The steady, but not slow, pacing of this picture provides much of its power because it relates to real life as compared to the unrealistic action of many movies.

"Young Adam" illustrates the importance of being needed, and how things are often not as they appear, right down to the name of the film. The title is never explained, though it is taken from the book of the same name, and there are no characters named Adam in the film. However, when we look at how Joe conducts himself, we make the biblical connection, he is the young "every man," a young Adam.

Pam’s Take: Joe is a taker, to be sure. But usually what he takes is given to him, quite freely.

It’s only April, but this is one of the best films of the year.