This latest feature from the eccentrically experimental Catalan director Portabella is a beautiful, sometimes faintly bonkers celebration and contemplation of the role Bach’s music plays in the world today. Blending historical reconstruction with very loosely linked ‘dramatic’ scenes and documentary sequences, the film constitutes a playful, painterly sequence of variations on the argument that Johann Sebastian changed the way the world hears thanks to his extraordinary ear for harmony.

Forbidden love blossoms in the city of Pompeii, which until the eruption of volcano Vesuvius in 79 AD, is one of the empire's most powerful cities.