Greek heroes are arseholes. This is a rather serious and languid retelling of the end of the Odyssey when Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) returns home after 10 years to his wife and queen Penelope (Juliette Binoche).

We are dropped suddenly into the final days where she is being forced to choose a new husband. The island of Ithaka has descended into thuggery with young louts – some looking like Chavs – bullying the peasants and making fun of Penelope’s son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer), who is all blonde curls and petulance. Oddly, Telemachus is made out to be weak and ‘hiding behind his mother.’ In the Odyssey, he sets out in search of his father and only returns to Ithaka after Odysseus’s return.

We see Odysseus wash up on the island after 10 years. He is a hero of the Trojan war but has come home alone with all of the worthy men he left with dying along the way.

I can tell this is directed (by Umberto Pasolini) and written by men because the focus is all about Odysseus’s angst. He’s on the island for a long time, knowing the difficulty Penelope is in, but navel-gazing and consumed with guilt and shame.

You know he’s gonna come good by the end because he is, you know, Odysseus and there is something a little bit satisfying about the third act. It all falls into a miasma of petulant resentful women and bloody, literally, self-righteous men though. Imagine if the story had actually been about the women.