THRILLER DRAWS ON A DIFFERENT KIND OF PASSION.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

GAY STALKER movie? Bracing meditation on God's insistent need for human acknowledgment? Beautiful and/or frightening love story?

Roger Michell's ``Enduring Love'' may be all of these things or none of these things, depending on the preconceptions you bring into the theater. Read into it what you will, but Michell has created one of the year's more thought-provoking films, a thriller in which the obsessive pest might be crazy, imaginary or Jesus himself.

The movie's opening scene is, in and of itself, worth the price of a ticket. Dynamic science professor Joe (Daniel Craig) has brought his sculptor girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) to the emerald English countryside for a picnic lunch and a marriage proposal. Just as he's about to make a toast, the couple is swept up in a chain of events that leads to a tragic accident. The scene is superbly shot, horribly traumatic and impeccably honest in its presentation.

Joe can't believe what he has seen and can't come to grips with his culpability in what happened. He's not alone. At the scene, the stringy- haired, hygienically challenged Jed (Rhys Ifans) meets Joe's gaze and asks him to pray. ``I find it helps in times like this,'' Jed says. Joe, a man of science, resists, but finally, reluctantly, gives in.

As Joe becomes fixated on the accident, Jed becomes consumed with thoughts of possessing Joe. Jed calls on the phone. He shows up at Joe's home and the university where he teaches. ``Haven't you got something to say to me?'' Jed asks. Later: ``You can't live your life in denial.'' Still later: ``I think you know me - better than you think.'' And still later: ``Everything means something. Otherwise, there wouldn't be much point, would there?''

That Joe often refers to Jed as ``Jes'' adds to the intrigue. Is Jed the Son of God, doggedly pursuing the intellectual, telling him to give into his enduring love or suffer the consequences? Michell (``Changing Lanes'') and screenwriter Joe Penhall seem to be leaning this way, but then you could also make a case for Jed as being a descendant of Glenn Close's jealous rabbit-boiler from ``Fatal Attraction.''

The movie comes from Ian McEwan's first-person novel in which Jed, at times, seems merely a device (and perhaps an imaginary one at that) by which the author can prod Joe into coming to grips with death, the brevity of life and feelings of intellectual and class prejudice. Here, he is an adoring, supremely needful suitor, desperate for Joe to recognize the divinity behind his love. Jed's intensity makes Joe - and us - uncomfortable, which is precisely the point. Love this powerful should be unsettling.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

ENDURING LOVE - Three stars

(R: language, some violence, a disturbing image)

Starring: Daniel Craig, Rhys Ifans, Samantha Morton.

Director: Roger Michell.

Running time: 1 hr. 36 min.

Playing: Pacific's The Grove Stadium 14 in Los Angeles; Mann Criterion 6 in Santa Monica; Landmark's Westside Pavilion in West Los Angeles.

In a nutshell: Man finds love, stalker and God. Are they one and the same?

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Rhys Ifans plays a man who could be either a dangerously unhinged stalker - or God - in ``Enduring Love.''