UNFOLDING over the course of 35 years, The Time Traveler’s Wife recounts a heart-breaking romance between two people who were always destined to meet and fall in love.

Unusually, one is a time traveller who vanishes without warning – and then reappears minutes, hours, weeks or sometimes years later.

Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost) is a perfect fit for director Robert Schwentke’s adaptation of the best-seller by Audrey Niffenegger, which had readers around the world reaching for their handkerchiefs.

Rubin navigates the shifting time-frames with aplomb, using visual motifs to tether present and past, and he remains largely faithful to the source text.

Slick visual effects allow the hero to fade and then re-materialise in front of our eyes, leaving behind a pile of clothes on the floor.

The couple’s wedding day is especially memorable, with different grooms appearing at the altar and the reception, where the band ominously bursts into Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart for the first dance.

The film opens in the late 1960s, when five-year-old Henry DeTamble (Ferris) first experiences time travel, dematerialising from the back seat of his parents’ car shortly before a truck ploughs into the vehicle, killing his mother Annette (Nolden).

The boy’s father, Richard (Howard), is consumed by grief and Henry becomes estranged from the old man, coping alone with the Chrono-Displacement genetic disorder that renders him unwilling to forge lasting emotional connections.

Working as a librarian in Chicago, Henry (Bana) meets a beautiful artist called Clare (McAdams), who stares at him with tear-filled eyes. “You told me this would happen and that I should just act normal . . . ” she whispers, unable to believe her beloved Henry is standing before her.

“I’ve known you since I was six years old, and you appeared in the meadow behind my parents’ house,” she adds.