Two lost souls are gifted a second chance at love in George C Wolfe’s slushy romance, adapted from the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook).

Nights In Rodanthe shamelessly tugs the heartstrings with its contrived tale of chance encounters and all-consuming passion.

Diane Lane and Richard Gere, who previously collaborated on The Cotton Club and Unfaithful, are an attractive pairing.

Once again, they generate palpable on-screen chemistry, the latter remaining on the right side of cheesy – but only just.

There’s an inevitability to the tears of the final act, accomplished with surprisingly little fanfare by Wolfe, although the director can’t resist a final shot on the beach that probably wasn’t quite so risible on the page.

Lane is a troubled wife who looks after a friend’s North Carolina inn in order to clear her head. But when she and the inn’s only guest, Gere, embark on a passionate fling the course of their lives changes.

Lane and Gere look beautifully windswept against the picture-postcard locations, while Scott Glenn delivers a memorable supporting turn as a husband and father scarred by grief.