NEXT week at City Screen comes the intense sexual shenanigans of Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs, full-on sex and all. This week, Daily Mail readers can get steamed up over more sexual activity, in this case Nicole Kassell's tale of one man's attempt to re-enter society.

That man is Walter and as he is played by America's king of outsiders, Kevin Bacon, you know he will not be a problem-free zone. Walter is a paedophile, and in the words of the synopsis from Tartan Films, "The Woodsman is an unnerving, ultimately hopeful portrait of compulsion and hard-won redemption".

Walter has been given the chance to start afresh after 12 years in prison. Newly arrived in an unspecified American city (the location is not important), he moves into a small apartment across the street from an elementary school and takes up a job at a lumberyard. He keeps out of eye contact, fearing that the workforce will discover he is a convicted sex offender.

Cautious and self-contained, Walter draws unexpected solace from another outsider, the tough and sassy work colleague Vickie (Kyra Sedgwick), who promises not to judge him on his past. However, that past is always at his shoulder, nudging the present. His brother-in-law (Benjamin Bratt) is forever wary; his sister shuns him, and suspicious local police detective Lucas (Mos Def) is always on his case.

When Walter befriends a young girl in a neighbourhood park, he must wrestle with the potential reawakening of his demons.

The Woodsman is a slow-burning, intense character study, a portrait of a man scorned by society and in turmoil with himself. It is a serious, adult work, never sensationalist, and it does not take sides.

How you react to this difficult subject may well be shaped by your moral standpoint on whether redemption can come to all, but Kassell's direction and Bacon's performance present in the straightest manner the struggle within as well as the abhorrence outside. The Woodsman is a harsh story of compulsion rather than compassion.

Updated: 16:18 Thursday, March 17, 2005