When Lionel Wor­thing (Paul Mescal) and David White (Josh O’Connor) meet over the top of a piano in a Boston col­lege bar, the spark between them is instant. One is a tal­ent­ed vocal stu­dent, the oth­er a com­po­si­tion major pre­oc­cu­pied with record­ing and cat­a­logu­ing the folk music of rur­al com­mu­ni­ties – their shared pas­sion for song is what brings them into each other’s orbit, and the onset of the First World War is what cru­el­ly divides them for the first time. While David goes off to fight, Lionel returns to his family’s farm in Ken­tucky, where the work is hard and hon­est. By the time they meet again, they’re both a lit­tle worse for wear. A sojourn to rur­al Maine to con­tin­ue David’s folk record­ing project pro­vides both with a new sense of pur­pose, and rekin­dles their ten­ta­tive romance, but like all great bal­lads, there’s tragedy on the horizon.

Oliv­er Her­manus’ sixth fea­ture takes him to North Amer­i­ca for the first time, cast­ing two bona fide heart­throbs: Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor. When The His­to­ry of Sound was announced in 2021 it set the inter­net ablaze, with many excit­ed about the prospect of a ten­der gay romance star­ring two of the hottest young actors in the indus­try – but the result­ing film is per­haps more restrained and del­i­cate, spar­ing in its sex­u­al con­tent, for bet­ter or worse. In fact, there’s some­thing even a lit­tle dis­tant about the film, in which Lionel and David’s romance amounts to a few months across sev­er­al years, and much of the focus is on its after­math. The film is more con­cerned with how this piv­otal moment in Lionel’s life changed every­thing about the per­son he would become.

Josh O’Connor, seem­ing­ly inca­pable of deliv­er­ing a bad per­for­mance, is won­der­ful and trag­ic as David, charis­mat­ic and glib and fan­tas­ti­cal­ly hand­some. Who wouldn’t fall in love with him, or the way his tired smile nev­er seems to reach his eyes? It’s a pity there isn’t more of him, and Mescal oppo­site is per­haps a lit­tle lost as Lionel, despite his best efforts to deliv­er a ser­vice­able Amer­i­can accent and the charm­ing chem­istry between them. There’s just some­thing a lit­tle too inte­ri­or about his per­for­mance – it’s dif­fi­cult to buy that his rela­tion­ship with David real­ly is as sig­nif­i­cant as the film wants us to believe it is. It’s also a lit­tle unfor­tu­nate for Mescal that he’s out­per­formed by Chris Coop­er as an old­er ver­sion of Lionel; he deliv­ers a sear­ing emo­tion­al mono­logue in the film’s final act which pro­vides some much-need­ed res­o­nance. But to Mescal’s cred­it, his singing sequences are quite beau­ti­ful, as are O’Connor’s, and the folk sound­track evokes Inside Llewyn Davis in its soulfulness.

The film feels weighed down by some unnec­es­sary sequences that don’t help to dri­ve the sto­ry for­ward, occa­sion­al­ly for­get­ting that the crux of the film should be Lionel and David’s rela­tion­ship and its long shad­ow; a sharp­er cut might pre­vent the film from sag­ging once the lovers part ways. While com­par­isons with Broke­back Moun­tain are inevitable among those with a lim­it­ed under­stand­ing of queer cin­e­ma, The His­to­ry of Sound has far more in com­mon with Mer­chant Ivory – par­tic­u­lar­ly The Remains of the Day and Mau­rice – in its per­va­sive melan­choly and sense of pro­found regret at past iner­tia. It’s not repres­sion that pow­ers The His­to­ry of Sound, but the tragedy of under­stand­ing some­thing far too late to chase it. Its but­toned-up nature and chaste­ness might frus­trate those hop­ing for a more sala­cious sto­ry, but Her­manus and writer Ben Shatuck (adapt­ing from his own short sto­ry of the same name) have pro­duced a unique and mov­ing romance for those will­ing to listen.

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The out­skirts of Lagos, 1993: a har­ried father, Fola (Sope Dirisu), return­ing to his tum­ble­down home, makes the snap deci­sion to scoop up his two bored, pre-teen sons and take them on a road trip into cen­tral Lagos to col­lect wages owed to him. He has an ulte­ri­or motive: so they may all be at ground zero when the results of a nation­al elec­tion are announced and, all being well, M. K. O. Abi­o­la will tri­umph over the rul­ing mil­i­tary jun­ta and bring democ­ra­cy and order back to Nigeria. 

He pro­ceeds with an ele­ment of cau­tion, know­ing that he has for too long been an absent father, earn­ing mon­ey from a far-flung fac­to­ry job (so he tells the boys) but has actu­al­ly been moon­light­ing as a polit­i­cal lob­by­ist for Abi­o­la. His duty of care extends to mak­ing sure that his sons have a bet­ter future, and in many ways this affect­ing and beau­ti­ful­ly-judged first fea­ture from Aki­no­la Davies Jr is about a father want­i­ng his kids to see first hand the fruits of his (often dan­ger­ous) labours and under­stand that he has been there for them on a nation­al lev­el, even if he hasn’t on a pri­vate one.

This entire review could be ded­i­cat­ed to the immense cen­tral per­for­mance by Sope Dirisu who, as the eter­nal­ly con­flict­ed father, is with­hold­ing a lot of infor­ma­tion from his fam­i­ly for their safe­ty. He also seems to have to alter per­sonas with every new per­son he encoun­ters. Ini­tial­ly, he’s a stern father who wants his boys (incred­i­bly nat­ur­al and fun­ny per­for­mances by Chibuike Mar­velous Egbo and God­win Egbo) to under­stand a bit more about the coun­try they’re liv­ing in, but per­haps not too much.

Soon he becomes the des­per­ate grafter who urgent­ly needs wages for upkeep; then he’s the shady polit­i­cal oper­a­tive who peo­ple refer to as ​“Kapo” as he tucks a few notes in their pock­et for sur­vival. One thing’s for cer­tain: he’s a piv­otal, well-liked pres­ence in the cap­i­tal, empha­sised by the fact that rov­ing mil­i­tary police can’t stop star­ing at him as if they recog­nise him from somewhere

The first half of the film com­pris­es a sur­vey of Lagos in the 1990s, and through a land­scape of severe socioe­co­nom­ic con­trasts he is able to give his sons a sense of the uphill bat­tle that they face. They begin to see signs of the life he lives in the city, and some­times the sur­vival tac­tics he uses cut through his self-paint­ed image as a right­eous fam­i­ly man. 

At the cen­tre of a film is a dia­logue scene on a beach in which the father leaves him­self open for ques­tion­ing and is able to impart both his wis­dom and attempt to furtive­ly cul­ti­vate a sense of nation­al pride in his inquis­i­tive off­spring. Dirisu chan­nels ten­der­ness, but his indig­na­tion con­stant­ly bub­bles beneath the sur­face. Yet their con­ver­sa­tion is cut short by a gang of maraud­ers sud­den­ly hack­ing chunks off of a beached whale, and the film con­stant­ly leans on the inter­play between the pro­tag­o­nists and the strange things occur­ring in the backdrop.

The direc­tion by Davies Jr is absolute­ly top-notch, not just how he is able to cap­ture the fine nuances of the actors on cam­era, but also how they are immersed into the chaot­ic melée of Lagos at this pow­derkeg moment. The plot ends up hing­ing on some strange coin­ci­dences in its final stretch, and the end­ing per­haps with­holds a lit­tle too much detail for it’s on good, but oth­er­wise this is a very fine pic­ture on a for­mal and emo­tion­al level. 

The film played as part of the Un Cer­tain Regard strand at the 2025 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, and could’ve very much held its own in the main competition.

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