SHAKESPEARE'S Lady Macbeth gets a raw deal, really. She may incite her husband to murder, but he’s the one who does the deed and doesn't know when to stop; it’s quite sad when she’s driven mad by guilt.

That’s just one reason why the title of this excitingly good British film is a red herring. It’s based not on the play, but the 1865 Russian novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, by Nikolai Neskov. And even Neskov’s character is far removed from Shakespeare's – a bold, self-reliant young woman who first chafes against her chauvinist milieu, then empowers herself, and finally stops at nothing to fulfil her desires.

The story has been relocated to northern England, still in the 1860s, and does away with the heritage decorum that stifles most period films. Its combination of rough manners, wild landscape and sex suggests a meeting of Wuthering Heights with Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but spiced with a female character more compelling and morally challenging than either of those novels offers.

In fact, the chief, provocative question the film raises is, how evil does this Lady Macbeth have to become before we stop liking her?

At first, Katherine (Florence Pugh) is another victim of the misogyny of the 19th century. Her wedding seems more like a life sentence with two jailors: her husband Alexander (Paul Hilton) and his father Boris (Christopher Fairbank), colliery owners living in a grand home, but mannerless, sexist boors, whose absent mother/wife has no doubt been undone by the strain. Alexander has been forced into this marriage, to bring about an heir, and has no liking or desire for his new wife.

Katherine takes her travails on the chin. In the weeks that follow, left to her own devices in the house with only her maid Anna (Naomi Ackie) for company, she passes the time as if in hibernation, waiting for the moment when she can awake.

That comes when father and son leave for business. The first thing she does is open the windows – it’s a lovely moment, as the fresh air invades this miserable house; then she unties her hair and walks the fields.

The temperature of the film shoots up when Katherine encounters cocky new groomsman, Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis). After initial hostility, passion ensues. When the masters return, Katherine isn’t prepared to let them encroach on her new-found happiness.

Director William Oldroyd is a theatre director making his film debut; and yet this is so confidently cinematic. It’s shot in muted colours, in keeping with the "grim up north" locale, save for the bursts of vibrant colour in Katherine’s dresses, which she’s forced to wear as the lady of the house but sheds with increasing abandon. And there are great touches, which serve the dark drama perfectly: the Siamese cat taking Boris’s suddenly empty chair at the breakfast table; Katherine posing for a photograph alongside an upright coffin and its occupant; passionate sex between mistress and servant, followed by a sudden cut to her having tea with the vicar.

The script, adapted by playwright Alice Birch, is lean and mean, the acting naturalistic; Hilton and Fairbank are brilliantly loathsome, Jarvis and Ackie convincing naîfs caught in an amoral spiral for which they’re not equipped.

And confirming the promise of her breakthrough role in The Falling, Pugh is simply sensational. Though we learn little of Katherine’s past, the actress speaks volumes simply through the deep, self-contained tone of her voice, her physicality, and a brazen badness that is almost comic. The character descends towards evil, yet it’s impossible to completely desert her. Pugh will be one of Britain’s great actresses in the years ahead.

ALSO RELEASED

Heal the Living (12A)

Absorbing, beautifully made French drama, which charts the two stories either side of a heart transplant: the tragic death of a teenage boy and his parents’ struggles to deal with the loss; and the middle-aged woman who may be given a new lease of life. In between are the hospital workers entrusted with the transplant.

The Promise (12A)

An important story – the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman government in 1915 – is short-changed by this dour treatment. A starry love triangle, between Christian Bale’s American journalist, Oscar Isaac’s Armenian medical student and the woman they both love (French-Canadian Charlotte Le Bon), sits uncomfortably amidst the atrocities.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (12A)

The sequel to one of the most entertaining and original of recent Marvel Comic movies features all of the first film’s engaging characters and cast, including the racy raccoon and the talking tree with the all-purpose one-word vocabulary: Groot.