Originally published on Best For Film Summer in February had all the potential to be lovely — admittedly a rainy day, winter warmer, hot chocolate of a film , but lovely. It also had all the correct ingredients: a dash of good looks from Browning, (and, if you are into the military-cum-fisherman aesthetic, from Downton ‘s Stevens) a pinch of convivial fireside singing from everyone, and a glug of functional alcoholism from Cooper. What’s not to love? Well, pretty much everything. The film – set in Lamorna, Cornwall, the home of the Newlyn School – is based on a book by Jonathan Smith, itself based on the diaries of land manager and soldier Gilbert Evans. It plays out in the midst of the bohemian interwar era – Stravinsky had just composed the avant-garde masterpiece The Rite of Spring , the ballet adaptation of which so enraged its audiences that they rioted. Duchamp took a surrealist adventure around Jura with the Picabias and Apollinaire, drank a lot, smoked a lot, took a lot, shagged a lot, came back, mounted a bicycle wheel onto a stool and created the first kinetic sculpture. Meanwhile, the Newlyn School were painting horse races and...

A story told in seven fragments about love, gender, and relationships we were always taught, growing up, not to have.