“The Governess.” Written and directed by Sandra Goldbacher. Running time: 114 minutes. Rated R (for nudity, sexuality and adult content). Nightly Sept. 28-Oct. 1, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

It is not without some unique measure of risk that writer and director Sandra Goldbacher set out to make “The Governess,” a film that takes us back 150 years to the pioneering roots of the camera and, by extension, the photograph itself.

Indeed, in order to pay homage to the camera — an invention that, upon its inception, forever changed the course of history — Goldbacher knew she not only had to make a film that explored at least part of that history, but also emerged as a tribute to photography as an essential art.

Happily, Goldbacher has succeeded; her film is gorgeously shot and richly atmospheric, at times wildly panoramic and inventive in scope. There are moments in “The Governess” when Goldbacher, much like her characters, is experimenting with her own camera, doing things with film that haven’t been done before — which, by film’s end, allows Goldbacher herself to emerge as something of a pioneer. It’s a nice touch in a good film.

In “The Governess,” Goldbacher directs Minnie Driver as Rosina da Silva, a wealthy, fiery Jewish temptress from London who grows up in a Sephardic Jewish household. Beautiful and high-spirited, vulgar and daring, Rosina is not so much an upper-class Jewess of the 1840s, as she is a modern woman of the 1990s in Victorian clothes, suggesting that once again Hollywood doesn’t trust audiences to come to period films without first lacing the films with sex, and building them around characters one would be hard-pressed to find during the time.

Still, as entertainment, “The Governess” works. When Rosina’s father is murdered by gentiles and her family suddenly loses its fortune, Rosina goes against her mother’s wishes and takes employment as a governess to gentiles on a remote Scottish island. There, she changes her name to Mary Blackchurch, is given the responsibility of tutoring young Clementina Cavendish (Florence Hoath), and meets the man who will change her life — Charles Cavendish (Tom Wilkinson), an experimental photographer-scientist who is emotionally removed from his tittering wife (Harriet Walter) — and thus primed for an affair.

Charles and Rosina fall into that affair while experimenting with photography. It’s a situation that gets so steamy, so out-of-hand, Rosina ultimately becomes the little nanny who shows her fanny while running about Charles’ studio in the nude. It’s a bit too much for Charles, a die-hard puritan, who soon is overcome with guilt. But Rosina remains inflamed by this older man, at one point inviting him to “suck the marrow from my bones!”

This from an upper-class Victorian Jewess? Oy, vey!

Still, the performances in “The Governess” are strong, particularly Driver’s, who again creates a character who comes fiercely alive within an emotional, erotic world. It’s a fine showpiece for a fine actress who is someone worth watching for in the future — or, in this case, the distant past.

Grade: B+

Video of the Week

“Hush.” Directed by Jonathan Darby. Written by Darby and Jane Rusconi. Running time: 95 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for violence and language).

In spite of what its title might imply, there is nothing quiet or subtle about “Hush,” a campy, completely over-the-top film that stars Jessica Lange and Gwyneth Paltrow as seething, mincing, face-slapping rivals.

To be sure, the film is ridiculous, but nevertheless great fun to watch. Lange stars as Martha, a maniacal mother-in-law who will stop at nothing to oust her daughter-in-law, Helen (Paltrow), from her son’s life. But beneath all of Helen’s initial charm and pliant, bleached-blond demeanor, is really, at heart, a tough broad from New York City — which is great for the film once the two women start slamming each other with mean-spirited barbs, and then, finally, against brick walls.

“Hush” is best when it’s base and bitchy, particularly in the scenes when Martha is pitted against Alice (Nina Foch), her own mother-in-law who is restricted to a wheelchair. If this sounds like a bow to “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” it is. Indeed, when these two women are in top form, as they are in one hilarious, unforgettable scene, they recall the best of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, two pioneering women who kicked and screamed their way into 1960s dysfunction, cinematic history, and this critic’s heart.

Grade: B+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear each Monday in the NEWS and, each Thursday on WLBZ’s “Alive at 5:30” he reviews what’s new and worth renting in video stores.