Charlize Theron has never let her beauty get in the way of her art. In "North Country" she was a smudge-faced iron miner and single mother. In "Monster" she looked like the wrath of god as a foul-mouthed prostitute and serial killer, and won an Oscar for her efforts. "Young Adult" is another story, though. The movie itself, directed by Jason Reitman from an original screenplay by Diablo Cody, is a cockeyed comic triumph that flashes between bright and dark like a strobe light of the spirit. And Ms. Theron, as Mavis Gary, a self-styled author rather than a mere writer, succeeds sensationally at something much harder than playing ravaged. Mavis was once prom-queen beautiful; these days, in her late 30s, she can still pull herself together to fairly dazzling effect. But she is also sly, selfish, nasty, hurt and hurtful, dryly sardonic and fatefully deluded. What makes her such a marvelous character is what seethes deep beneath her skin.

Watch a clip from Charlize Theron's latest film, "Young Adult". Soon after her divorce, a fiction writer returns to her home in small-town Minnesota, looking to rekindle a romance with her ex-boyfriend, who is now married with kids. Video courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

What makes the movie marvelous is the same combination that the filmmaker and writer brought to "Juno"—unerringly subtle yet precise direction plus a literate script with dramatic energy and a delicate tone. (Mr. Reitman directed and co-wrote "Up in the Air" as well.) The movie's title refers to the genre of books Mavis authors, or more properly ghost-writes, and to Mavis herself, the suggestion being that she is young for her age. But young can't begin to describe her immaturity, or her failure to flourish as an adult. When we first see her in Minneapolis, a slattern in a junk-strewn apartment, she's living on scraps of loveless sex, drinking too much and picking up snatches of kids' conversations here and there, then dropping them into her chronicles of Kendall Strickland, the teenage heroine of a series called Waverly Prep that is, in fact, headed for the dustbin of subliterary history.

Suddenly, though, the blockage in Mavis's life gives way to a bizarre breakthrough, and she becomes a person possessed by a mission—reclaiming the love she lost when her high-school sweetheart got married. (He's played by Patrick Wilson.) To find her old flame, she goes off to her hometown in the company of her better half, a yappy canine pipsqueak named Dolce. As she drives, she listens to old tapes on the car's cassette player while we see the player's innards whirring and spinning in macroscopic detail; outdated technology as an access route to the listener's past, and an emblem of her stunted psyche.

It's a clever flourish in a film with a distinctive look (Eric Steelberg was the cinematographer, and Kevin Thompson designed the production) and an exceptional cast. Mr. Wilson's Buddy, quite happily married with a new baby, can't fathom what Mavis is up to—his puzzled decency is painfully charming—but she's as transparent as a wine-stained carafe to an old classmate named Matt Freehauf, who is played to laconic perfection by Patton Oswalt.

Charlize Theron in 'Young Adult.' Paramount Pictures

"Guys like me were born loving women like you," Matt tells her ruefully. They are two of a kind with a kinship in misfortune, much of it self-inflicted: Matt has used the small town as a refuge since high school, when a misconstrued hate crime left him significantly but far from seriously disabled. They are also a classic comic pair in a production that's chockablock with vivid characters: Elizabeth Reaser as Buddy's wife, Beth; Collette Wolfe as Matt's sister, Sandra; Louisa Krause as a droll motel desk clerk.

Still, the movie belongs to its star at every moment she's on screen. This is partly a function of Ms. Cody's script, which depends on a daring supposition—that audiences will invest their attention in a heroine who, from the start, confronts life with a toxic vibe. (I think they will, once word gets out that Mavis is as funny and surprising as she is.) It's equally a tribute to Ms. Theron's fearless reach and formidable range in a role that takes her from wry comedy into something perilously close to an American tragedy. By the end, and against strong odds, "Young Adult" gives us a grown woman to weep for.

From left, David Dencik, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, John Hurt, Gary Oldman and Ciarán Hinds in 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.' Focus Features

'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'

The manifold pleasures of this remarkable film are cool, but intense. And they're intensely cool in the most modern sense when it comes to Gary Oldman as John le Carré's master spy George Smiley, who was portrayed in the classic 1979 BBC miniseries by Alec Guinness. This Smiley doesn't let out a word for the first 18 minutes; he simply takes everything in with his steady gaze and inscrutable mien. When he finally speaks, it's only to say he's retired. That's his way of resisting an invitation he knows he can't refuse—to find the Soviet mole who has infiltrated the uppermost echelon of the Circus, or the British Secret Intelligence Service. (Almost all of the suspects are guilty of something, though only one of them has spilled all the beans.)

Withholding Smiley's voice is one of many intriguing games that the film plays in the course of a Cold War mystery about spies playing sinister games of treason and personal betrayal. Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish director who brought new blood to the vampire genre with "Let the Right One In," proves to be an inspired choice for telling Le Carré's convoluted tale in less than 40% of the original 324-minute running time. And he worked from an exemplary adaptation, both lucid and succinct, by the husband-and-wife team of Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor. (That's not to say that I understood every part of the plot; a certain amount of confusion comes with Le Carré's territory.)

Where the miniseries relied on brilliant acting and long, spellbinding conversations in banal settings, the feature film relies on a narrative structure that sometimes feels impressionistic—shorter scenes with fluid flashbacks—while putting its own collection of topnotch performers in settings that are quietly spectacular for their visual design and their muted colors.

If I seem to be stressing form over content, it's because the movie's form serves the content so well. "You're a good watcher," one of the spies tells an earnest schoolboy. Mr. Alfredson and his cinematographer, Hoyte Van Hoytema (he shot "Let the Right One In"), make good watchers of us all by seducing us with striking images: trains moving slowly on parallel tracks in a marshaling yard; a baby nursing at its dead mother's breast; an airplane materializing out of nowhere on an isolated airstrip; an archive's hivelike architecture. Even a visual joke becomes an exercise in compulsive watching. It follows Smiley's visit to a veteran operative who keeps honeybees in his back yard. In a scene shot from the rear, we see the two men and another operative driving away in a sleek Citröen sedan. But there's a bee inside the car, and no way not to watch it flitting around until Smiley lowers a window to let it out.

None of this would warrant watching, of course, if it weren't for the cast that brings the drama to life. Some of the names—Colin Firth, John Hurt—are better known than others, while those others, including Mark Strong, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy, are known for their excellence on the stage as well as the screen. Yet this version of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" turns on the presence of Mr. Oldman, and he is an actor of great experience and accomplishment who has finally found a film that fully deserves him.

His voice, so long and teasingly withheld, resonates with warm regret in its lower registers—Smiley has no illusions about the role of virtue in spy craft—and with icy fury when he raises it against stupidity or deceit. His face is more often than not a mask, which makes us grateful for every hint of a smile, and amazed by the range of feelings he can imply without actually expressing them. Alec Guinness was a more assertive presence, with a more mellifluous voice; his Smiley was also older, bordering on elderly, and quizzical bordering on owlish. Mr. Oldman's emphasis is on self-containment, but what his Smiley seems to contain is all the wisdom of a blighted world.

Corrections & Amplifications
Collette Wolfe plays Matt's sister, Sandra, in "Young Adult." An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Sandra was Matt's wife.

DVD Focus
'The Cider House Rules' (1999)

Charlize Theron is beautiful Candy, beloved of Tobey Maguire's young orphan, Homer, in Lasse Hallström's entertaining and mysteriously moving version of John Irving's huge novel, which the author adapted for the screen. The setting is an orphanage in 1940s Maine; the main theme is Homer's search for home and family, and his discovery of violence and love beyond his orphanage's doors. Michael Caine is Wilbur Larch, the loving, ether-sniffing orphanage doctor who teaches Homer to practice obstetrics without a license. Oliver Stapleton did the luminous cinematography. The production was designed by David Gropman.

'The Italian Job' (2003)

In this jaunty remake of the 1969 original, Charlize Theron gives a lovely performance as a safecracker named Stella, who towers over three Mini Coopers used as getaway cars by a crew of high-tech thieves. (She drives one of them with impressive aplomb.) The movie, directed by F. Gary Gray from a script by Donna Powers and Wayne Powers, helped put BMW's remake of the old British Motor Mini on the map, and it didn't hurt Ms. Theron either. Can it be coincidence that she drives a Mini in "Young Adult"?

'Dracula' (1992)

Gary Oldman stars in the toothsome title role of what is also known as "Bram Stoker's Dracula" or "Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula"; the title variants may have been efforts to avoid litigation by Universal Studios, which had laid claim to ownership of the title "Dracula" plain and simple. The production, neither plain nor simple, won Oscars for makeup, costume design and sound-effects editing. Mr. Coppola directed from a screenplay that James V. Hart adapted from the Bram Stoker novel. Anthony Hopkins is Van Helsing. Winona Ryder plays the dual roles of Mina Murray and Elisabeta.

—Joe Morgenstern