Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender on falling in love for ‘Oceans’

This image released by Dreamworks II shows Alicia Vikander, left, and Michael Fassbender in a scene from, “The Light Between Oceans”.

The cathartic pleasures of a good old-fashioned weepie are promised and then never delivered in Derek Cianfrance’s handsome but curiously lifeless The Light Between Oceans. In stars Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender, he finds performers who manage to deftly inhabit the characters, and just keep it from tipping over into Nicholas Sparks-style soapy melodrama.

Following the inventive marital drama “Blue Valentine” and the father-son crime pic “The Place Beyond the Pines”, filmmaker Derek Cianfrance applies his gentle directorial touch and exceptional talent for probing the human experience to M.L. Steidman’s bestselling 2012 novel of the same name, resulting in a visually striking and emotionally charged period piece.

The couple made their red-carpet debut at the Golden Globes in January and although they are happy to be photographed together, the Assassin’s Creed star refuses to share more intimate details about their life. “Why would I?”, Fassbender says. “Initially I thought, ‘Oh god, this is going to be hell: on this peninsula in the middle of the nowhere”.

The novel-turned-movie tells a timeless story about love and loss. She goes for it. “This is about very universal, emotional subjects that I think everyone can kind of relate to”.

Before Alicia Vikander earned The Danish Girl Oscar nomination, the Swedish actress was best known in North America as the Ex Machina robotic seductress. “Then you’re just watching a brand, as opposed to an actor”. When we started to work, Michael and I both challenged and pushed each other. It’s easy to anticipate where the story goes, every time; there’s no unexpected turn of events as every twist is plainly announced. They’re each structured specifically to enhance the story through the way you consume them.

In the film, Fassbender plays Tom Sherbourne, a battle-scarred Australian soldier returning home from the bloody frontlines of WWI.

“But we hadn’t really. we met properly in Wellington in the rehearsals for the first time”, added Fassbender, 39. The stark, wind-swept beauty of the film’s rugged, romantic location, along with cinematographer Adam Arkapaw’s photography, gives the film a classical sweep new to Cianfrance’s films. But for me, that was the same as the stories I saw up on the movie screen. (My kingdom for a movie about a woman slowly roused from her depression by a lovely male life force.) The two of them can’t wait to start a family, but their dreams are dashed when Isabel miscarries twice.

“Roar Uthaug is the director of Lara”, Vikander says. She was asked to cover her eyes until she was to exit a woodshed for her first take. “It always comes down to the people I want to work with, and the privilege of it”. It was probably the most extraordinary sunrise I had ever seen.

“For all the tragedy descending upon the characters of this film, it’s hard to muster adequate tears”, wrote Village Voice’s April Wolfe, “Not because the acting is lacklustre [it’s incredible, actually], but because the onslaught of melancholia is so relentless that it’s almost impossible to refill the reserves”.