There is a ghost haunting this love story. And I feel it is missing a spark

Author Ben Shattuck adapted his short story for the screen and it is his screenwriting feature debut. These facts might account in part for why the film feels a little slight in content for its length and abrupt and underwritten in its events at time, with some curious choices made about what to omit and include.

Director Oliver Hermanus (Living) takes things at a leisurely pace which sometimes feels appropriate and other times makes things just a little slow, especially when many of the story elements are familiar from other films.

In 1917, Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal), a Kentucky farm boy with a remarkable voice and sense of music, is studying voice at the Boston Conservatory. One night at a pub, he hears a familiar folk song coming from the piano. At the keys is David (Josh O'Connor), who persuades Lionel to sing a song, which leads to more singing and the whole crowd joining in. Mescal and O'Connor did their own singing, apparently, and are impressive. Music is the food of love, or at least an appetiser: they spend the night in David's bed.

But this is no one-night stand: the young men's bond quickly strengthens before they are separated. David is a wealthy, sophisticated orphan who spent time in Britain while David is drafted into military service (Lionel is exempt because of his poor eyesight) but his music studies are interrupted too: the conservatory closes and he returns home to tend the farm when his father (Raphael Sbarge) dies.

Then comes the core of the story. In 1919, Lionel receives a letter from David, who's now in Maine working at a college and invites Lionel to accompany him on a department-funded journey around the state to collect folk songs from the people of different places and stations in life and record them on wax cylinders. Leaving his mother (Molly Price) and grandfather (Tom Nelis) on the farm, Lionel goes to meet David, rekindling their relationship both personally and musically.

Watching how they record the performances on the technology of the time is fascinating and the music itself is beautiful and often haunting. We learn something about David, too: he can be quite the manipulator when it comes to getting people to sing the songs that have been passed down through families and communities for generations. And, of course, the two men are spending time together and savouring it: the special ingredient of this film is the music and its central place in the story.

There is one odd scene of a quarrel which I didn't find entirely clear and there could have been a little more emotion - in the script, direction and performances. There's nothing here between Lionel and David like Ennis and Jack's desperate passion in Brokeback Mountain, even when they're alone. Understatement is one thing and preferable to bathos but this feels a little too restrained. The performances are good (even in the earlier scenes when they look a bit old for the characters they're playing) but the relationship is missing an essential spark and so is the film.

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Inevitably, the two men have to part and since this is Lionel's story, we see things from then on through his eyes. It's clear that the time spent with David was the highlight of his life. It was also the highlight of the film: O'Connor - who's been everywhere lately - is missed whenever he's off screen since his character is the livelier of the two.

The framing story of The History of Sound, with Chris Cooper as the elderly Lionel, works well and has a fine emotional pay-off. It would have been even more powerful had the film made the men's relationship feel just a little more special, letting us in on how deeply felt it was.