While it's likely to disappoint the prurient and disgust the puritanical, Bill Condon's biopic Kinsey has plenty to offer the rest of us. Paramount among its offerings are fine acting, a glimpse of our recent past unburdened by deliberate nostalgia (see Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven), and perhaps a bit of an education.

The film opens in black and white, with Alfred Kinsey instructing an assistant in interviewing techniques while personally answering the questions that he himself designed. This is Kinsey in middle age, experienced, self-assured, and Condon is clearly using this scene to establish those very qualities. But he also uses the interview questions as entry points to Kinsey's past. Through flashbacks we learn that despite his father's sermonizing about the perils of the zipper, Kinsey's first act of rebellion wasn't sexual; it wasn't even social. It was to quit engineering and study biology, a passion he pursued for many years in comfortable solitude. Kinsey, as portrayed in this film, was the quintessential scientist, driven by curiosity and faith in scientific method.

Liam Neeson, immersing himself in the title role, never falters. He shows us an entomologist whose fumbling and fruitless honeymoon led to his greater awareness of sexual issues. Kinsey finds a doctor who can answer his and his new bride's basic physiological questions--why sex may be too painful for her and whether they "fit"--but later discovers that others have questions no one can answer, questions that boil down to "Am I normal?" Normalcy being something that statistics can establish, he plots out a survey and begins the work that will make him famous--and infamous.

A common flaw of biopics is their tendency to flatten the arc of their subjects' lives--and thus of the filmed drama--into timelines. In jumping too quickly from point to point, they render facile what might otherwise be thought-provoking developments. Not so in Kinsey. Though the points do connect to create a picture of Kinsey's life, the audience is left with the pleasant sensation of having drawn its own conclusions. Subtle shifts in the characters' relationships move the story through time. Attractions blossom into allegiances that are later shaken loose by disappointments and betrayal, only to settle back into respect. Condon supports the actors' work by carrying the audience into each new phase with diverting transitional devices, including scraps of interview and overdubs of Kinsey's letters and writing, both of which are among the most interesting--and titillating--aspects of the story.

Chris O'Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard and the likable Timothy Hutton form a believable team as interviewers working with Kinsey. Sarsgaard, the subject of much attention for his part in this film, has the look of the serpent in the garden, tempting Adam first and then Eve. (He seems more human when he himself bears the weight of an infidelity.) Laura Linney as Mrs. Kinsey has less screen time than one might expect but plays her part with measured practicality and restrained emotion.

It's fascinating to consider how much and, simultaneously, how little has changed since Kinsey's sex studies were published. Abstinence is still being touted as a broad cure for social ills rather than one choice among many. At one point Kinsey complains that "the enforcers of chastity are massing once again"--an observation, like many in the film, that for many feels all too relevant today.