The new biographical film from Bill Condon is a bold and intelligent exploration of the life of one of the 20th Century's most controversial figures that profits from the writer/director's frankness, but eventually falters in the face of some of the most difficult issues Kinsey's career raised.

Condon's best known previous screen credit is for co-writing and directing Gods And Monsters. That film was more of a character study than a traditional bio-pic. It's subject was the late James Whale, who directed the original Frankenstein and it's first sequel in the 1930s, and went on to win an Academy Award for his work on Show Boat.

In that film, Condon allowed Whale's sexuality - he was one of the first openly-gay directors in a heavily-closeted Hollywood - to be a three-dimensional part of his life, even in his old age. What emerged was a sensitive, insightful portrait of an individual in the last years of life, reviewing and attempting to come to terms with the factors that had brought him to the point at which he had arrived.

Condon avoided the distortion of linear narrative by relating psychologically-associated events in flashback. Focusing on the inner, subjective connections between the impacts of various events in Whale's life, Condon was able to make a space where it was easy to relate to the currents of longing, creative energy, love, loss and loneliness, in spite of the fact that their specific expressions were far from most people's experience.

For some reason - perhaps the big-budget, big-star pressures and expectations to which Kinsey has been subjected - Condon has not been able to "personalize" the story in the same way. Although the first two-thirds of the film are brightly original and exploratory, the last third betrays the essentially un-categorizable and contradictory trajectory of Kinsey's life by trying too hard to "tie things up."

It suffers from many of the typical bio-pic problems and cliches - and so fails to really get inside the man's feelings about his life and presents a rather two-dimensional record of events- rather than illuminating the inner landscape (which looks to have been pretty elaborate and interesting). The screenplay settles for psycho-cliches (sexually repressive, domineering father leads to rebellious, sexually curious and transgressive son) rather than digging in to the dynamics of this particular father and this particular son.

That said - it is a very interesting narrative about a crucial and highly influential event in our collective psychic history which has been to some extent suppressed and/or distorted.

Kinsey's work laid the ground work for the "sexual liberation" movement of the 60s and 70s. His research (which very few people have actually read!) gave us a new context for thinking about sexuality - as a behavior over which we had some degree of control, over which we can and do exercise a surprisingly wide field of "choices," rather than as a series of biological imperatives.

Following in the footsteps of his detailed and painstaking zoological study of Gall Wasps - in which, after collecting more than half-a-million specimens, Kinsey concluded that from a point of view of scientific taxonomy there is no such thing as a "normal" or "typical" Gall Wasp, only a widely diverse collection of individuals who share a variety of similarities in a variety of degrees - he proceeded to apply his methods to the study of human beings and their sexual behavior.

He discovered a similar diversity among human beings - no two exactly the same and the breadth of variation far, far wider than the conventional wisdom of his day had allowed. The can of worms that this discovery opened up for him personally, for his colleagues, and for succeeding generations (which ought to be, in many ways, the most interesting aspect of the story) is explored here rather superficially - since there are a lot of "events" to cover in a mere two hours.

Yet the resonance of his work is far from entirely neglected. Several "shocking" moments in the film prove how short the distance is between modern audiences and our pre-Kinsey forbears, and how much we still have to learn from his work.

Condon saves the film from a preachy self-righteousness by his refusal to make judgements about Kinsey and his work, opting instead - as Kinsey himself might have - to tell the story and allow it to resonate idiosyncratically with each observer. He leavens the mix with large and often unexpected helpings of humor - most of it based on our ongoing embarrassment over things sexual - that underlines the often-overlooked "playful" facet of our human self-exploration.

The questions of "openness" in sexual relationships, of the conflict between the emotional and psychological component of relationships and biological attractions and impulses is one that continues to be at the center of our collective consciousness in a society where sexual association - usually in the form of provocatively-dressed, highly-attractive young men and women - has become a "commodity," routinely used to enhance products that range from clothing and jewelry to heavy machinery, soda pop and mechanic's tools.

As in most bio-pics, there is enough material here for a dozen good films and because of the genre's constraints this film barely flits across the surface of them. But given those constraints, Condon does a better than average job of at least opening the subjects up for discussion.

The performances are very good. Liam Neeson plays Kinsey with a very interesting mix of showmanship (in his role as a scientist) and personal modesty, scientific caution and audacious confidence. He manages to embody that early 20th Century faith in "science" that makes his naivete about the social consequences of his research believable.

The conflicts that arise between the observations that he makes as a "scientific observer" (a role that seems to allow him far more freedom and security that his everyday "personal identity") and the ramifications those observations have in his private and professional life are central to the story, and Neeson handles the almost schizoid disconnect with convincing emotional complexity.

Laura Linney portrays his wife, Mac, as involved in a struggle between the supportive, pre-1950s American stereotypical wife and the independent scientific colleague and life-partner of a proto-"womens' libber." She brings a lot of humanity to the part, particularly to her pivotal confrontation with the ramifications of Kinsey's behavior and its impact on their relationship.

It was the intimate connection that Kinsey made in this relationship that was the fundamental motivation for the major achievements of his life, and the way that relationship reflects the ongoing concerns and conflicts provides a second perspective on the incidents of that life. Whole films have been devoted to this sort of conflict, and Linney manages to serve the film by encapsulating all the ambivalence and confusion into a very few words and a very few moments of screen-time.

The supporting cast is outstanding. Tim Curry, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Chris O'Donnell, Oliver Platt and Peter Sarsgaard all manage to provide strong, fully-realized characters whose interactions contribute immeasurably to illuminating the subtle, paradoxical nuances of the story.

The film looks great. The production values are high and there is a very polished and professional interworking of the various crafts. The original music is effective and well-coordinated with the action, with only one or two brief forays into the dangerous and disappointing territory of the anthemic. The period music is very evocative, providing many interesting and occasionally humorous contrasts to the narrative line.

For those who are sensitive to sexual content, it should be noted that for a film that is about sexual behavior, there is very little sexual behavior depicted in the film and what there is, is more clinically-observed than eroticized. The R-rating is earned much more for the frankness of the discussions and verbal descriptions of sexual behavior than for the imagery. But there are a couple of images - mainly presented in the context of lecture illustrations - that would otherwise have earned the film the controversial NC-17 rating.

Given the limits of the "bio-pic" genre - which the Condon more or less accepted - this is a well-made, very well-acted film about some interesting people and about a subject that has compelled human interest since the earliest recorded history, and continues to do so today.

-- Ned Depew