Josh O’Connor & Paul Mescal Are The Perfect Yearning Couple In 'The History of Sound'!

As two young acting icons, it is shocking that Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor had yet to share the screen before now. Moreover, considering that they both have dabbled in queer roles in the past -- from Mescal’s romantic neighbor in All of Us Strangers to O’Connor’s quietly yearning farmboy in God’s Own Country -- it is a stroke of genius to pair them as a queer couple on screen.

The History of Sound is a 2025 historical romantic drama from South African director Oliver Hermanus. The film tracks the tragic love story of two musicians, Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor), as they hum their way across the northeast of the United States amidst World War I. After David enlists in the war, Lionel is forced to reckon with his own trajectory, the ruling power of talent, and the balance between love, ambition, and secrecy. The film is not only a gay love story but a tapestry of early-20th Century American folk music, with Lionel and David recording the humming, drawling lyrics of rural Americans on wax cylinders, and logging them for later use. The film premiered in competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival in May and was nominated for the Palme d’Or and Queer Palme. The film’s melancholy, poetic tone and its bereft sonic palette make it a perfect indie film for a Cannes audience, and its perfect, hip casting makes it a great fit to be a new queer classic for Gen-Z.

Mescal and O’Connor have been active actors for over a decade, with Mescal starting primarily on English theaters and breaking out with the Sally Rooney novel adaptation "Normal People", and O’Connor landing his international breakout role in Netflix’s "The Crown" in 2019 as a young Prince Charles. Both men have been staples in prestige films and TV for the last 5 years, Mescal even being nominated for an Oscar for his heartwrenching work in Aftersun. They’ve also become staples in the TikTok sphere, with edits of the actors permeating social platforms, demonstrating their heartthrob charm beyond their acting chops. 

O’Connor, with his large ears and mousey eyes, is a “real shape-shifter”, according toGod’s Own Country director Francis Lee. Always elusive and ever charming, O’Connor brings his signature cagey emotionality to every role, and The History of Sound is no different. As David, O’Connor balances genuine desire with an illusory unreachability. The first-mover in the doomed romance of Lionel and himself, David is ahead of his time in his forward-thinking views on race and queerness in America, a mindset as enticing as it is tragic. Mescal, by contrast, plays Lionel with a stoicism that cracks open in song. The role leans into his musical instincts, his imperfect but soaring voice, and his ability to convey emotion through silence as much as sound. Watching them together, it feels baffling that these two haven’t shared the screen until now.

If Mescal and O’Connor bring raw, physical yearning to the film, director Oliver Hermanus provides its mournful, poetic frame. The South African indie filmmaker, known for Afrikaner films like Moffie and Queer Palme winner Beauty as well as English-language/English-produced film Living (which scored veteran Bill Nighy a Best Actor Oscar nomination in 2023), Hermanus has long specialized in stories of men hemmed in by duty, repression, or social order. His films are intimate yet expansive, pairing sweeping visuals with a sharp awareness of history’s oppressive structures. That sensibility is felt here in every muted glance and every song caught on a wax cylinder. Hermanus, who grew up in apartheid-era South Africa with activist parents, is uniquely attuned to how personal longing collides with political context, and how a love story can also be a story of survival. The History of Sound is no different. Hermanus examines moments of complete silence amidst the roaring score. For a film about sound, the foley and sound design is employed (and completely muted) to heighten emotion. Shots are washed in a sepia tone that grounds its audience in the regional time period as well as dampens the frame, rooting the film in the surrounding nature. 

The History of Sound enters a cinematic tradition that has often struggled with queer representation. Early films coded gayness in “pansy” stereotypes or condemned it through tragedy. Even when the Hays Code loosened, queer characters were often punished for their desires. From Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine’s queer-coded film The Children’s Hour (1962) to the Jake Gyllenhaal-Heath Ledger near-Best Picture winner Brokeback Mountain (2005), the tragic ending loomed large. Yet queer cinema has also been a space of radical tenderness, from Maurice (1987), Happy Together (1997), Moonlight (2016), and Call Me by Your Name (2017), each pushed visibility further. Hermanus’s film falls somewhere in this lineage -- a romance that embraces intimacy without spectacle but which never forgets the inevitability of loss. In recent memory, there have been celebratory and non-tragic queer films that make gay love valid not because it ends tragically but because it exists in the first place. Films like Fire Island and Happiest Season demonstrate this. 

The History of Sound tows the line between the tragic and unproductive “bury your gays” trope and a genuine examination of not just a gay love story but a story of the love of music. In line with Brokeback Mountain and Call Me By Your Name, our leads do not find a typical happy ending. However, in their search for creativity and grace, they make their mark not only on each other but on their world. 

At its core, this is a film about sound as much as love. Lionel and David’s journey is a chronicle of music-making in America, but the songs they collect are deliberately fragile, captured as if under glass. Composer Oliver Coates (who worked with Mescal on Aftersun) crafts a score that fuses archival folk tunes with aching strings, while contemporary folk artist Sam Amidon grounds the music in lived texture. The effect is both beautiful and funereal, their love story unfolding in harmony with a disappearing sonic tradition. For Mescal, the music became an anchor: “These are songs not everyone will know, but they deserve to be heard,” he explained in Cannes interviews. The film itself, in his words, is shaped like one of these songs -- haunting, brief, destined to linger.

Ultimately, The History of Sound is a film of restraint and, dare I say, a film that is too restrained. Recent queer films have pushed these movies into new genres, from action-comedy (Everything Everywhere All at Once) to holiday cheer (Happiest Season), and THoS does feel regressive in its short, teasing glimpses of intimacy and its refusal to allow its main characters to reach catharsis. However, it is of its time -- the early 20th century -- and reminds us that queer history is not as cheery as recent celebration films. These two actors are at the peak of their powers, holding back, waiting for a glance, a brush of the hand, a song sung under their breath. It is a gay love story in which no one ever quite says what they mean, an evocation of a time when secrecy was survival. That makes it frustratingly subdued at times but also piercingly authentic. Mescal and O’Connor deliver a romance that feels both eternal and ephemeral, as if it were always meant to be discovered decades later, on a wax cylinder waiting to be played.

The History of Sound is in theatres now!