The History of Sound movie review: Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor can’t lift this thin romance

What about being gay in 1917-1920 Maine, America? Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor) appear to have never heard of prejudice as they live and love in tents in the middle of nowhere. David does hint at it at one point, but Lionel – in the film’s low-key, mumbling, soft-pastel-hued style – murmurs about not being worried.

Even the harsh farm life back home in Kentucky that Lionel sometimes returns to doesn’t ruffle the general languidness. Lionel himself is equally at ease wielding a shovel in the snow as a baton for the Oxford choir, or speaking Italian to a Roman partner. David’s background is non-existent.

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The film is loveliest when the two are together and embark on a project that involves walking across Maine collecting folk songs on a rudimentary device (it is David’s passion as a musicologist, and Lionel, the singer, falls in love with it too). Some of the families in isolated pastures, which open their hearth and heart to them, suggest more interesting stories than do our itinerant researchers.

There is a sense of genuine loss at one point in the film, but before you decide that here is where The History of Sound comes to a close, it sacrifices that moment for yet another monologue.

In Lionel’s own words, having sung in a choir and conducted a choir and done all that, folk songs remain “the most warm-blooded music”. If only the film had more warmth or blood.

The History of Sound movie director: Oliver Hermanus
The History of Sound movie cast: Paul Mescal, Josh O’Connor, Chris Cooper
The History of Sound movie rating: 2 stars