Present day London. Jed is a talented young actor, obsessed with the idea that he is the next Brando.

When he hears that a new production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" is in the works, he becomes convinced his breakthrough moment has arrived and does everything he can to secure an audition.

Jed is incredibly upbeat and optimistic, but we start to see that his positivity is driven by a fear of failure and a staggering capacity for denial that is just papering over a raw, desperate need for validation.

And although he is only in his early 30s, Jed’s ideas about masculinity are out of date. He has not noticed the world departing from its fascination with the brooding, muscular machismo that still holds him rapt.

At the moment he needs recognition the most, are revealed to be taking a sudden interest in gender equality and gender non-conformity which threatens to destroy his Brando dreams, his identity and ultimately his whole concept of masculinity.

Incandescent has been born from the hilariously fearful and self-serving reactions some of my male friends have had to the Me Too movement.

I see the film as a necessarily cruel yet also affectionate portrait of oblivious, self-serving, male privilege in a confused, panicked, meltdown or of traditional masculinity in its pitiful death throes.

It is a comedy, but it is one that should often feel deeply uncomfortable to watch. We should want to laugh but not be sure we have permission to, as Jed’s an awful, self-obsessed man but he is also incredibly vulnerable. He is incapable of experiencing his own emotions and so unable to process pain that he has to deny or mythologise it. His fantasy of heroism offers an escape but also threatens to render him obsolete.

In some sense, he is deeply deserving of our sympathy as the world has not prepared him for the possibility that he is not completely fantastic.