The mood is eminently correct, the setting grand, the manners formal. But beneath the elaborate Victorian rituals and intricate costumes on display in "Angels and Insects," there lurks as mesmerizingly bizarre a film as you may ever see.

Based on A. S. Byatt's novella "Morpho Eugenia" and directed by Philip Haas in the same distinctively arid, rigorous style he displayed in "The Music of Chance," this elegantly perverse film observes the rituals of the natural world everywhere, even within the confines of exaggeratedly polite society. Examining Victorian repression with a scientist's fascination, Mr. Haas beautifully captures Miss Byatt's peculiar conceit. The characters in this strange tale are both obsessed by phenomena of the insect world and exemplary of them. The tale weaves complex, unnerving parallels between human life and the more sinister mysteries of nature.

As directed by Mr. Haas with a keen appreciation of the author's sly gamesmanship, "Angels and Insects" tells of an impoverished entomolgist,...