‘Gladiator 2’ star says new romance film no ‘Brokeback Mountain’

Irish actor Paul Mescal balked at critics comparing the latest film he stars in, a gay romance that competed at the Cannes Festival, to “Brokeback Mountain.”

“The History of Sound” by South African director Oliver Hermanus stars Mescal and British actor Josh O’Connor as lovers. After meeting as students ahead of the start of the World War I, their characters fall for each other while recording American folk music.

Variety has described the film as “‘Brokeback Mountain’ on sedatives,” while The Guardian called it “a quasi-Brokeback Mountain film whose tone is one of persistent mournful awe at its own sadness.”

Ang Lee’s 2005 film starred Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal and featured a sex scene in a tent.

“I personally don't see the parallels at all between ‘Brokeback Mountain’ other than the fact that we spend a little bit of time in a tent,” said the star of “Gladiator II.” “It’s a celebration of these two men’s love. I find those comparisons relatively lazy and frustrating.”

The film’s director agreed. The fact that “the previous incarnation of something that can be comparable is 20 years ago obviously just shows that there should be more films about the dynamics and the nuances of queer relationships,” Hermanus said.

The film “wasn’t about the complication of their sexuality – that wasn’t the problem between them,” he added. “What was going to keep them apart was the assumption that they might have other loves in their life.”

It “was never about we have to have loads of sex scenes and the world needs to see Paul and Josh get their kilt off,” he said.