Kinsey

Bill Condon's fascinating biopic turns the microscope on pioneering scientist Alfred Kinsey (Neeson), who caused a sensation in January 1948 with the publication of his medical journal Sexual Behaviour In The Human Male.

Based on thousands of sexual histories of American men taken by Kinsey and his researchers Clyde Martin (Sarsgaard), Wardell Pomeroy (O'Donnell) and Paul Gebhard (Hutton), the book shattered taboos about sex behind the white picket fences of American society.

Between 67 per cent and 98 per cent of men confessed to having sex before marriage depending on their social class, 92 per cent of men admitted to masturbating and 37 per cent of American men related at least one homosexual experience.

Overnight, Kinsey became a media darling and the book's original print run of 25,000 sold out in days.

Behind the scenes, Kinsey practised very much what his book preached - frankness and honesty between couples - enjoying an open marriage with his adoring wife Clara (Linney).

Bu Kinsey's private sexual utopia of partner-swapping and experimentation gradually sowed seeds of jealousy and mistrust between the research team members.

Five years later, when he published the companion volume Sexual Behaviour In The Human Female, America turned on Kinsey, unable to stomach the same frankness about its mothers and daughters.

As such, Kinsey went from hero to cultural pariah.

Shot in the style of one of Kinsey's probing sex study interviews, Condon's film is a revealing portrait of a complex, driven yet emotionally damaged man, whose work lit the touch-paper of the sexual revolution of the Sixties.

The film brings into focus Kinsey's fraught relationship with his overbearing father (John Lithgow), a stern Methodist and Sunday school teacher who sermonised the downfall of a sexualised human society.

Neeson beautifully conveys the passion and social ineptitude of the great man and Linney delivers another intense performance as his long-suffering wife.