An understandable level of buzz followed the news that two of our hottest young actors, Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, were starring in gay love story. But anyone pulling up in the hope of a passionate epic will experience severe anticlimax. The History of Sound is not a continuous relationship drama but about a brief encounter that colours a life, and it is not characterised by the powers of its leading men – who have both delivered stronger performances in better films. It is another slight, sentimental film by the man who made the Bill Nighty vehicle Living.
With a screenplay by Ben Shattuck adapting his own short story, director Oliver Hermanus takes a small, poignant idea and warps it into a two-hour film. It is 1917 when Kentucky farm boy Lionel (Paul Mescal) meets the worldly and charming David (O’Connor) at a music conservatory in Boston. We have been told through an opening voiceover that Lionel sees the colours of sound. So it makes sense that he looks over at David playing the piano in a smoky, wood-paneled bar and sees a rainbow.
