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WATCH, LISTEN & LOINS

JAMIE Bell has his best role since “Billy Elliot” in “Mister Foe,” a darkly comic tale of a twisted teen on the cusp of adulthood.

When we first meet Bell’s Hallam Foe, he’s a feral 17-year-old who’s exiled himself to a treehouse on his father’s Scottish estate. He wears a badger-skin headdress, war paint, and sometimes his late mother’s dress.

Hallam passes the time spying on his father (Ciaran Hinds, the devilish Mr. Lockhart in Broadway’s “The Seafarer”) and his beautiful stepmother (Claire Forlani), whom Hallam is convinced was somehow involved in his mother’s drowning death three years earlier.

That doesn’t stop Hallam from getting it on with stepmom, though. After that, and the departure of his sister to Australia, Hallam flees to Edinburgh.

There he takes to the rooftop and spies Kate (Sophia Myles of “Tristan & Isolde”), a young woman who greatly resembles his stepmom. Hallam talks his way into a menial kitchen job at a large hotel where Kate works in human resources.

Kate is alternately appalled and attracted by this weird young man, especially after her married lover (Jamie Sives) – her and Hallam’s boss – catches Hallam spying on their own coital activity.

She invites Hallam out for a drink to celebrate his 18th birthday – and, well, things happen.

Director David Mackenzie (“Young Adam”) handles what could have been a heavy-going cross between “Peeping Tom” and “Vertigo” with an agreeably light touch.

“Mister Foe” is especially worthwhile for the chemistry between Bell and Myles – who memorably trade slang terms for genitals in one scene – and a backstage look at the workings of an Edinburgh hotel where a spare room always seems to be available for the staff’s extracurricular use.

MISTER FOE

“Peeping Tom” meets “Vertigo.”

Running time: 95 minutes. Rated R (sex, profanity). At the Angelika, Houston and Mercer streets.