In this period drama, premiering at Cannes, two of Hollywood's buzziest male actors play lovers making music together – but the film could do with far more passion and urgency.

Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain was released 20 years ago, but there haven't been many period dramas about same-sex romances since. In a way, then, The History of Sound must count as a daring project: an expensive Hollywood film in which two of cinema's buzziest male actors are cast as gay lovers. Subject matter aside, though, it's an oddly old-fashioned and conventional work. If you'd never heard of its stars, Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor, you could easily mistake it for a long-lost film made by some Merchant Ivory impersonators in the 1980s or 90s.

Mescal plays Lionel, a Kentucky farm boy who is raised in a shack in the early years of the 20th Century. As well as having perfect pitch, Lionel supposedly has a remarkable singing voice – and although Mescal's singing never sounds any better than anyone else's in the film, the character's talents are enough to earn him a place in a Boston conservatory. This is just one of the many advancements that come implausibly easily to him.

Just as easily, the shy Lionel falls into a relationship with the arch and confident David (O'Connor), a composition student with a taste for folk music. Their problem-free romance continues until David is drafted to fight in World War One and Lionel has to return to his family farm. But in 1919 (every date is there on the screen, so we don't get lost), David invites Lionel to go on a song-collecting field trip with him. The pair will roam around the scenic countryside for weeks, recording folk ballads on wax cylinders, and sleeping under canvas, where they can have tasteful, un-explicit sex, with no apparent worries about prejudice or danger.

Still, this blissful camping holiday can't last forever, so Lionel will have to decide what to do in the years ahead. Settle down with David in a minor college? Move to Europe where he is sure to be lauded as a great chorister? Or take over the farm from his aged parents.

To be........

© BBC