The Ballad of Wallis Island review - the healing power of the old songs

I think The Ballad of Wallis Island is the best British romcom since I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), which it closely resembles.

In the earlier film, an unexpected love affair develops on a remote Scottish island that is cut off by stormy weather. The fictional Wallis Island is off the coast of Wales, not Scotland, yet director James Griffiths makes the same poetic use of landscape that characterises the Powell and Pressburger classic. Both movies are about love and nostalgia, but whereas the primary conflict of I Know Where I’m Going! is class, the corresponding fault line in The Ballad off Wallis Island is celebrity.

Tom Basden, who co-wrote the movie with co-star Tim Key, plays a folk singer by the stagename of Herb McGwyer (though he was actually born, more prosaically, Chris Pinner). Back in the day, a musical and romantic partnership with Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) lifted him to the height of fame, but the duo broke up in acrimonious circumstances. Now Herb is all washed up – quite literally so, on the beach of Wallis Island, as he gets drenched climbing out of the boat. “Dame Judi Drenched," quips Charles (Key), a lonely widowed superfan who has retreated to this remote island after winning the lottery and plans to blow the rest of his fortune reuniting McGwyer and Mortimer for a one-off private gig.

It’s an unlikely setting for a pop concert. (“Kate Bush came to the island,” says Charles. “But I think that was more of a retreat than part of a tour.”) Herb, who is peevish and conceited, is at first resistant. “I’m not playing the old songs like some tribute band.” “Tribute-to-yourself band!” replies Charles. Except, of course, that it’s also a tribute to Mortimer, who is long retired from music, lives in Portland, Oregon, with her American husband, and makes her own chutney to sell at the local farmers’ market.

Herb and Nell haven’t spoken to each other for a decade. Theirs was a toxic relationship. Think Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in their post-Newport phase, or Richard and Linda Thompson post-Sufi commune. Inevitably, Nell’s arrival with birdwatching husband (Akemnji Ndifornyen) in tow raises Herb’s tetchiness to the next level; Basden's perfomance is perfectly judged. But the question remains, can the pair bury the hatchet and get the band back together for one night?

Playing the old songs becomes a recurring motif. The movie is actually something of a revival itself. In 2007, Basden and Key co-wrote and co-starred in a BAFTA-nominated short, The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island, which Griffiths also directed. It was funny in parts but basically a sketch, as you might expect from Basden (Plebs, After Life) and Key (best known, perhaps, as Alan Partridge’s sidekick Simon), both veterans of the comedy circuit. (Pictured below: Tom Basden and Tim Key)

One scene, in particular, where Charles sheds a tear as he listens to the couple rehearse, is undeniably moving because it becomes clear that the songs of McGwyer and Mortimer provide a soundtrack which enabled him to grieve for his late wife.

By the same token, Charles’s grief – the tears of a clown, if you like, which Key deftly conveys – provides a context for Herb’s growing realisation that what he had with Nell was the most satisfying part of his career. Romantically too, he thinks, “or you wouldn’t sing those songs like that.” “They’re just songs, Herb,” she replies. “And you don’t love me. You love the past. And it was great, but it’s gone now. It’s time to grow up, Chris.”

The Ballad of Wallis Island is one of the best romcoms since The Odd Couple (1968), which it closely resembles. It’s a love story and a bromance elevated by the actors' superb comic timing and a sense of wonder evident in the atmospheric shots of waves on the beach, of games of cricket, and of sky lanterns rising over the cliffs at night, all of them beautifully photographed by G Magni Ágústsson.

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