The prospect of watching two charismatic actors literally fall in love on screen will either appeal tremendously, or make you a little queasy. Either way, there's no denying Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander make an extraordinary couple in this melodramatic love story.
Based on the 2012 novel of the same name by Australian author M L Stedman, The Light Between Oceans is set on an isolated island off the west coast of Australia. The film was shot in Marlborough and Otago, with Adam Arkapaw's cinematography making New Zealand's epic landscape a character in its own right.
Fassbender and Vikander play Tom and Isabel, a young couple who meet after World War I, marry, and move to tend the lighthouse on rugged Janus Rock. One day, they stumble across a small boat carrying a dead man and a baby, and Isabel convinces Tom to let her keep the baby and raise her as their own.
Tom, a shell-shocked veteran, is torn by the decision to keep the baby, and the moral implications of their decision weighs on him heavily, as it does the audience. If you haven't read the book, you won't yet know how Tom and Isabel's story will play out, but it's clear that heartbreak and despair lie ahead.
