Technically, that makes the film a historical biopic – except Nichols, who pulled off a similar trick earlier this year in his science-fiction adventure Midnight Special, calmly dodges every expectation you have for the genre. Loving is short on grandstanding and hindsight, long on tenderness and honour, and sticks carefully to the historical record.
It also features two central performances of serious delicacy and depth – and Negga, an Ethiopian-Irish actress best known for a handful of TV roles, is place-your-Oscar-bets-now tremendous in the role of a black woman quietly fighting her way to the centre of her own life story.
The assumption throughout Loving – both among the supporting characters, because of the period in which it’s set, and among the audience, because we know how these films usually work – is that the husband will be the stoic warrior for justice, while the wife mops his brow in the evenings and gives him a reason to fight. But as played by Edgerton, Richard is fundamentally ill at ease with his relationship’s gathering significance – his small eyes bright with tension, his considerable physical bulk turned in on itself.