Newcomers Nathalie Press (left) and Emily Blunt are the passionate duo behind director Pawel Pawlikowski's erotic coming-of-age drama, My Summer of Love.

A pretty redhead lies on the grass behind her broken red motorbike, looks up into the sun and sees her would-be lover for the first time. Soon there are kisses by a secluded country brook and rolling passion on a grass tennis court.

When it comes to sexual rites of passage, the Polish-born, London-based director Pawel Pawlikowski knows exactly what an erotic drama like My Summer of Love needs to succeed: beauty, obsession and danger.

Over one summer in Southern England, two 16-year-old girls share a mutual fascination with one another that grows into something more in a rare story that captures every girlish emotional and physical nuance with dead-on accuracy.

Pawlikowski shows wit, dramatic flair, a sure hand at eroticism and plenty of postmodern visual attitude in My Summer of Love. For those who appreciate movie turn-ons, dramas that grab hold of one's head and heart, it's a summertime gem worth discovering.

Mona (Nathalie Press) is a smart teen who wants more out of her working-class life. Tamsin (Emily Blunt) is well-schooled, spoiled and infatuated with Mona. They represent opposite ends of the British class divide, the cliché have-and-have-not love affair, but their feelings for each other unite them. Who could blame Mona for believing that nothing could ever go wrong with Tamsin? The point about their relationship, the reason for hoping that they'll be friends forever, is that they provide what the other needs.

Press is a pale, freckly redhead who resembles another British actress, Tilda Swinton, but her performance shines on its own merits. She is gung-ho about her new relationship, confident that life can't get any better.

As the smoky Tamsin, Blunt is manipulative and mesmerizing, a credible siren with flowing brown hair and deep-set eyes, capable of making would-be lovers do what she wants.

Paddy Considine, a familiar face of British film thanks to Dead Man's Shoes and 24 Hour Party People and Pawlikowski's own Last Resort, is tense and edgy as Mona's brother, Phil, an ex-criminal turned born-again Christian. Phil has converted the family pub into a Christian meeting room and is building a giant cross on the hillside overlooking their Yorkshire town. He's unprepared for his sister's new love affair and blind to his role in it.

Both Press and Blunt are making their feature film debuts, and they are as vibrant, naíve and headstrong as their characters require them to be. Pawlikowski has given them passionate breakout roles, the kind young actresses dream about landing.

It's hard to imagine their future projects can be any better. Yet you hope they try again and again. With their believably nuanced performances, Press and Blunt have earned their chance at long acting careers.

Many filmmakers like to use the word dreamlike to describe their films, but Pawlikowski has earned the right with My Summer of Love. Pop chanteuse Goldfrapp supplies the shimmering music that accompanies the film's glorious sights. Every spot in the story, from the sun-drenched West Yorkshire hills to Tamsin's ivy-covered mansion and Mona's cluttered room above her brother's pub, is mesmerizing.

Pawlikowski left Poland at age 15 to relocate to England with his mother. He studied poetry at Oxford and made numerous documentaries for the BBC before his first feature film, 1998's The Stringer. Last Resort (2000), a low-budget film about Russian émigrés to England, introduced the filmmaker to a wider public in Europe. It also revealed how much landscape means to Pawlikowski. In My Summer of Love, the lush surroundings are as much a character as the humans who inhabit them.

But the film, a razor-sharp tale that resembles Jean Genet's The Maids more than any contemporary movie romance, ultimately belongs to the fiery passion between Press and Blunt. The swooning starts the moment Mona, lying in the grass, sees Tamsin for the first time and builds throughout to an inescapable, riveting fate.

Not all love affairs are dangerous -- just the ones that fascinate us. Grade: A