She may be still only 24, but Aberdeen-born Sophie Kennedy Clark is already a veteran of one of the most controversial European films of the last decade - Lars von Trier's sexually explicit Nymphomaniac - and one of the most acclaimed British ones, the Oscar-nominated Philomena.

In the second she won a Scottish BAFTA playing the title character as a young woman in a cast which also includes Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. In the first, we watch her and lead actress Stacy Martin compete to see how many men they can have sex with on a train. Quite a lot as it turns out.

Looking to add another superlative to that already impressive collection, Kennedy Clark has recently finished shooting a film which may come to be seen as one of the most bizarre, twisted and surreal romances ever to grace the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It'll certainly be the only one to feature Rhys Ifans in two roles, one of which involves him donning a massive prosthetic cranium.

It's called The Marriage Of Reason And Squalor, and it's directed by Brit Art star Jake Chapman who, along with his brother Dinos, was nominated for the 2003 Turner Prize. "Avant garde" and "visually delicious" is how Kennedy Clark describes it when we talk, though she says she can't begin to guess how it will be received.

"I lived it every single day and that became my norm, this magical mind-bending journey that Jake Chapman sent me on. So, for me, having been there every day and somewhat made sense of things that are absurd, it's hard to be objective about what people are going to think."

The film has its world premiere in Edinburgh on Thursday and it's also currently screening in a slightly different version as a four-part mini-series on Sky Arts. Given the risk-averse nature of most terrestrial broadcasters, it's probably the only place it could find a home.

The film was adapted by playwright Brock Norman Brock from Chapman's own 2008 novel. Predictably, it's shot through with the same sense of the macabre and grotesque that you find in his art: this, remember, is the man who once bought a collection of authentic Adolf Hitler watercolours, embellished them with crudely drawn rainbows and exhibited them at London's White Cube Gallery.

Kennedy Clark plays the fragrantly named Chlamydia Love, a young woman with a questionable grasp on reality who claims to have been given a volcanic tropical island as a wedding present by her surgeon fiance, Dr Algernon Hertz (Ifans). Travelling there, she finds the island's current owner is reclusive author Helmut Mandragorass, he of the bountiful bonce (Ifans again). Mandragorass occupies a Bond villain-style eyrie on the lip of the volcano, and what follows is a surreal and nightmarish love triangle between Chlamydia, Helmut and Algernon. Think David Lynch in his wilder moments. Think Peter Strickland's genre-bending film The Duke Of Burgundy. Think French Primitivist painter Henri Rousseau. Think Alice In Wonderland, but in denim hotpants and a floppy red sun hat.

The film originally had the words Mills And Doom added to the title, which gives some inkling of its director's intentions and of the pulpy romance fiction he's setting out to subvert. Producer Colin Vaines, meanwhile, calls the film "a blackly comic, erotic story in the tradition of Roman Polanski's Cul De Sac". The celebrated Polish director used Lindisfarne in Northumberland as the backdrop for his 1966 film. Chapman took his cast and crew somewhere rather more exotic.

"I said to Jake 'When you wrote the script did you just put 'Barbados' because you wanted to go to Barbados?" Kennedy Clark laughs. Not that she was complaining about spending 10 days in the Caribbean, even if it involved 5am starts and late finishes.

Given the young Scot's track record so far - she has also appeared in Tim Burton's Dark Shadows and Charlie Brooker's dystopian Black Mirror TV series - it's no wonder she cites Tilda Swinton and Samantha Morton as her acting heroes, and says that the films which affect her most deeply are ones that are "uncomfortable or mind-expanding or just different".

Likewise it's the directors of these sorts of films who seem most drawn to her very particular looks. Jake Chapman is just the latest in the line, and naturally enough she has also attracted the attention of modelling agencies. She's currently on the books of London-based Storm and has fronted campaigns for Pringle and Burberry.

"My nickname growing up was Pixie," she says. "Aesthetically, I look like I should only be seen once a year on top of a Christmas tree. Maybe I have a kind of baby doll appeal that people like putting in darker things because it's an interesting juxtaposition. And actually my personality and skill set lends itself quite well to quite extreme things."

But the looks are only half the story. An ebullient and engaging personality, she admits she's up for pretty much anything a director can throw at her.

"I pride myself on having absolutely no shame," she laughs. "So no matter how extreme the part is, as long as I think what is going on in it is appropriate to the film, I'll happily give anything a shot."

To date, that has stood her in good stead, especially with the famously exacting Lars von Trier. Notorious for terrorising actresses and as controversial in his way as Jake Chapman, the Dane has a fearsome reputation. Did she see that side of him?

"Lars is very soft spoken and has a real twinkle in his eye and he does have a very striking sense of humour," she says. "But there is something about him which is quite unsettling. Because of the whole media circus surrounding him, you don't want to call it before you see it. But it's something you kind of wait for. And, yeah, there were things that I felt were a little bit of an odd way of asking an actor to do something sometimes."

But she loved the experience and defends the final film.

"I remember first reading the script and loving that it wasn't hyped-up romanticism about sex, yet it wasn't sexy," she says. "You followed the psychosis of Joe, the lead character, rather than the fact she was having sex with everyone."

As for the many and varied sex scenes in the film, "they were dark and they were tragic and I think we don't often get to see sex on film like that, though these days you do see it on things like [US TV series] Girls, where they try to show a more realistic view."

Born and raised in Aberdeen, Kennedy Clark is the daughter of singer, actress and broadcaster Fiona Kennedy, and businessman Francis Clark. Her grandparents on her mother's side were the Gaelic singers Calum Kennedy and Anne Gillies.

Fiona Kennedy's acting credits include much-loved TV series Sutherland's Law and a 1971 BBC adaptation of Nina Bawden's children's novel The Witch's Daughter. And wasn't she also in The Wicker Man? "Yeah," says her daughter. "She got her head chopped off." And she cackles merrily at the thought.

None of this made an acting career inevitable, though. In fact by the time Kennedy Clark was born, Fiona Kennedy was far better known as a singer and family-friendly broadcaster, and her acting days were well behind her.

"It was only when we started to speak about what I wanted to do that she spoke about what she used to do. But she gave me the best advice when I properly moved down to London and got an agent: she said 'It's all bulls*** - but it's fabulous bulls***'."

Kennedy Clark isn't too complimentary about her mother's later screen career - "I'll get a clip round the ear for that" - but for The Wicker Man decapitation scene at least, she's grateful. It certainly makes justifying her career choices a little less tricky.

"Me having to describe the films that I do to my parents has not been easy," she says. "It can't be a short conversation. I was trying to describe what I get up to in my next short film and I had to quit half way through because I realised it was starting to sound a lot worse than it actually was.

"So I said to my mum, 'OK, when The Wicker Man came out, what did people say about it?' And she said 'Obviously it was controversial and it was a cult hit'. So I said 'Well, what I'm trying to do with my career is do stuff that is maybe not initially understood but give it a couple of years and people will finally come round to it and go 'Jesus! That was bloody brilliant! Why did none of us get it at the time?'".

Whether The Marriage Of Reason And Squalor will fall into that category remains to be seen. The acclaim may be instant, it may be a slow-burn, it may never come at all. Whatever the outcome, Kennedy Clark says she'll continue to travel the dark side of cinema. "Following in the footsteps of people who are creative and daring is the only way that I'm ever going to feel satisfied with the work I'm doing."

Not that there isn't fun to be had along the way too. There is, after all, that "fabulous bulls***" to consider. Is she still enjoying it?

"Absolutely," she laughs. "I feel like I'm winning at life."

The Marriage Of Reason And Squalor has its world premiere on Thursday at the Odeon 2, Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, www.edfilmfest.org.uk