Heaven knows they’re miserable now

The Light Between Oceans is one of those films that comes issued with a handy how-to-use manual. Shudder as hero arrives on remote Australian island to man lighthouse. Cheer when in swift dash to mainland he secures hot bride to join him. Grimace when her womb proves incapable of holding anything in for a whole nine months. Bring heart to mouth as baby is somewhat implausibly washed ashore in rowing boat. For rest of film, carry on weeping.

The source material is the 2012 novel by M.L. Stedman, which has sold millions in loads of languages. It features a Hardy-esque plot of flatpack sadism in which punishment is administered even-handedly to a trio of protagonists. Such plots — see also The Bridges of Madison County — have a habit of attracting major players for no doubt estimable reasons while also totally giving them an Oscar shot. Here the sizzling leads are Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, with best supporting miserablism from Rachel Weisz. Anyone from Australian Equity wondering why its own members were not deemed box office enough to play this blighted trio should address their complaints to British producer David Heyman and American screenwriter/director Derek Cianfrance. Fourth billing goes to omnipresent Aussie Bryan Brown, although he has only one brief scene.

Fassbender plays Tom Sherbourne, a Flanders veteran who craves solitude after four years of trench foot. (We begin in 1919 or so, though no one seems to have PTSD.) With his velociraptor grin and berg-blue irises, Fassbender embodies more than anyone since Clint a towering, taciturn, go-it-alone big-screen man’s manliness. At the sight of him heroines’ knee joints turn to putty. So it proves here. Vikander, as Isabel, the daughter of a local schoolmaster, has no sooner spotted Tom than she’s favouring him with an array of up-for-it dark-eyed gawps.