Brighton, the late 1950s. Dashing young policeman Tom (Harry Styles) and his girlfriend, Marion (Emma Corrin), strike up a friendship with Patrick, a suave museum curator (David Dawson). Some four decades later, Patrick has been incapacitated by a stroke and moves into the couple’s south coast semi. But while Marion cares for him diligently, Tom wants nothing to do with him. What follows is a murkily lit, glumly functional slog that hauls itself wearily back and forth through the timelines, revealing the ties that bind them all together, to the accompaniment of a lot of lachrymose piano on the score.

The best that can be said about Styles is that his is not the worst performance in Michael Grandage’s uninspired plodder, but that’s not much of an endorsement, given the half-hearted work from most of the cast.