ON the evidence of The House Of Mirth, Gillian Anderson will not be consigned to the ex-files when X-Files runs out of paranormal cases to investigate.

Abnormally for a small-screen actress so associated with one role, all thoughts of Agent Scully head west when confronted with the assured poise of Miss Anderson in period costume and endless hats, auburn hair aglow beneath, living the high-wire, high-society high life of a ravishing socialite in turn-of-the-century New York.

The year is 1905, and Anderson's Lily Bart finds herself reliant upon her aunt for financial sustenance and social improvement. With her 30th birthday coming into port she must choose between marrying for money or love in the charming if uncommitted form of lawyer Lawrence Selden (Eric Stoltz). Given that Stoltz is equally red of hair and two ginger nuts should never go together except in a biscuit tin, the first, more dangerous path is obviously the one she must follow.

Lily moves in a gossiping, malicious, jealous circle, a close-knit, suffocating house of no mirth, full of graceful surface ritual and graceless back-stabbing and duplicitous manoeuvres. Poor Lily is headed for a fall, disgrace and poverty, courtesy of being wrongly accused of having an affair, a rumour that has her aunt (an over-acting Eleanor Bron) cutting off her financial umbilical cord.

This may be an American movie, but in essence it is a British film, adapted from Edith Wharton's novel by that master of miserable, working-class arthouse English pieces, Terence Davies, maker of The Long Day Closes and Distant Voices, Still Lives.

Davies's reputation for period detail goes before him - you would never know he had used Glasgow rather than New York - and here he adds elegance to his tableau. Better still, the character detail is fully rounded too, giving emotional depth to this beautifully cruel drama. As for Gillian Anderson, she has the X factor.