Usually when you see a film this good, you can't wait to tell your friends and urge them to see it themselves. Kissed is tender, poetic, romantic and deeply moral. The protagonist is sensitive, caring, intelligent and beautiful. But, and there is not getting around this, she is also a necrophiliac. That's right, dead bodies.

Sandra is the classic girl next door: fresh-faced, charming and lovely. But flashbacks show us her isolated childhood and her increasing fascination with death, with childhood burial rituals for dead pets take on a sensual element. Caught up in her growing obsession, Sandra takes a job in a funeral parlour and eventually carries out her fantasy to "cross over". She decides the first time as "like diving into a lake - sudden cold and silence" and bodies as shining like stars.

Complications arise when she meets fellow student Matt and begins a living, breathing romance. He becomes equally obsessed with Sandra's unusual tastes (can you blame him?) and increasingly jealous of her other "lovers". It's a situation that can't endure for long, and the denouement is no less shocking for having been subtly foreshadowed along the way.

Based on a story by Barbara Gowdy, Kissed continues the Canadian fascination with sex and death started with Atom Egoyan's "Exotica" and David Cronenberg's "Crash". First time director Stopkewicz handles her controversial material with elegance and sensitivity while newcomer Molly Parker's performance was deservedly honoured with a Genie (the Canadian Oscar).

Kissed is a film that stays with you long after you leave the cinema - for days you will think of Sandra and wonder how it must be to have passions so far outside the norm and yet so compelling. Go and see it, then think of a way to describe it to your frineds. If you come up with something good, let me know.