Hallam Foe is not - as you might suspect - an obscure meteorological region catered for in the shipping forecast. He is, in fact, a profoundly damaged teenager coming to terms with life after his mother's suicide.

Played with a lumbering adolescent awkwardness by Bell, he's convinced himself that vampish step-mother Clare Forlani did away with his mam so she could worm her way into the affections of his father (Ciaran Hinds), a successful architect living in a Scottish baronial pile in the middle of the Highlands.

Hallam - full of self-loathing after being seduced in his tree-house (!) by step-mom - ups sticks to Edinburgh and joins the vagrants who drunkenly swagger down the wynds and stairs of the city's old town.

It's there that he spots the comely Kate (Myles) - who could be the double of his dead mother - a recruitment manager in one of the city's monumental luxury Victorian era hotels.

Landing a job in the kitchens, he watches her from afar, spying from his berth in the giant clock tower of the hotel and, later, scuttling across the rooftops to sneak a peek through the Velux windows. It's not your traditional romance.

Pretty soon, he realises Kate is embroiled in an unfulfilling affair with cold-eyed, married hotel manager Alisdair (Jamie Sives)… a state of affairs he can't allow to continue.

After the disappointment of Asylum, director David Mackenzie is back on familiar off-kilter territory with this lean adaptation of Peter Jinks' novel.

Bell perfectly captures the destructive angst of the grieving Hallam and Myles has never been better as the besuitted executive with hankerings for the dark side.

A major plus is Mackenzie's use of Edinburgh's rain-soaked locations, with neither the tartan tweeness of Greyfriars Bobby or the drab concrete alley of Trainspotting.

It's a stylish, original romance whose dark leanings are leavened by a current of optimism running through its darting narrative.

Tim Evans