Boston, 1917. Lionel (Paul Mescal) sits at a table in a bar, deep into conversation with friends over whiskey and cigarettes; somewhere in the background, someone plunks out a piano tune. Then comes the voice. It’s a man singing a folk song, like the ones that Lionel grew up with. He soon finds himself standing over the man, who has handsome curls and cheekbones, and is somewhat abrupt. His name is David (Josh O’Connor). Little do either of them know that this moment will alter the trajectory of their lives.
The History of Sound, the new film from Living and Moffie director Oliver Hermanus which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, concerns the forbidden love that blossoms between the two men thereafter. As that fateful night goes on, they bond over their shared affection for the folk standards. Lionel, who describes an ability to “taste” and “see” music, and so presumably has a form of synesthesia, feels it strongest. They drink and sing into the early hours of the morning, before stumbling out into the street. Eventually, they find themselves in David’s unshowy apartment, where they have sex.
Their secretive relationship continues on-and-off over the following years, chiefly interrupted when David is called up to serve in World War I. He later disappears entirely; across the second half of the film, Lionel is left to pick up the pieces, traveling Europe as a means of escape, but also to find purpose, leveraging his musical talents to sing in Italy and teach in England.
It makes for a surprisingly challenging watch, much more cold and reserved than you might expect of a period gay romance, not least one revolving around the age-old tragic trope of star-crossed lovers. Nevertheless, Mescal and O’Connor do admirable work to elevate the material; the latter has a knack for conveying the subtlest of emotions with a split-second glance or the flicker of an eyelash. They are intimate, and there are intimate scenes, but Hermanus largely opts to spare the details. The most we see is the silhouette of a backside, or bodies interwoven under the covers.
It’s a choice that will probably strike some as controversial. There has been a push, in recent years, for queer cinema to be more sexually authentic—and, in tandem with that desire for raw honesty, sexually explicit. Conversely, The History of Sound makes the divisively tame Call Me by Your Name seem positively pornographic. (The horniest moment in the film comes before their first sexual encounter, when David spits a stream of water onto Lionel’s tongue, and into his mouth.) The online debate as to whether sex scenes are “necessary” has now gone on for what feels like an age—as tediously as an unsatisfying hookup that refuses to reach its climax—but at least, in this case, they would add a bit of warmth to a film that could do with it.