The Ballad of Wallis Island review

“I feel like I’m in Misery, like I’m going to wake up with two broken ankles”, says an exasperated Tom Basden down the phone to his manager. He is Herb McGwyer, a-once prominent UK folk artist (key stress on the word artist) whose fame and musical notoriety arose alongside his creative collaborator and ex-lover Nell Mortimer. Now, due to faltering sales of his solo work and the need to finish off a new album, Herb has accepted an invitation from wealthy superfan Charles Heath to come to the remote Wallis Island and play a special private gig. Little does Herb know, this show has a couple of deliberately concealed bombshells. Firstly, Charles is the sole audience member, informing Herb’s Kathy Bates-related anxieties, and, more significantly, he has also invited Nell herself with her new American birdwatcher husband in tow.

This poses a slight problem for Herb, who has never really got over the musical or romantic break-up of McGwyer-Mortimer, which is a moniker that Charles obsesses over, as if he is referring to a major artistic movement. This fawning awkwardness becomes more poignant as the reason behind Charles’s mania is revealed: he is a widower and the band was a passionately shared favourite of his late wife Marie. There is a cliched but undeniably touching and heartfelt scene involving sky lanterns that brings home how intrinsic McGwyer-Mortimer was to their relationship.

Charles is tremendously played by Tim Key, the film’s co-writer alongside Basden. Overbearing, garrulous and painfully immune to embarrassment, Key hilariously captures the mannerisms of someone who has been largely on their own for far too long. His incessant prattling amusingly clashes with Herb’s conceited professional front, who spits out “ going commercial” like it’s a slur and manages to say “because artists don’t whiten their teeth” with a straight face. Herb is easily humbled through a few silly but humorous running gags, such as being offered rice pudding to save his sodden mobile phone or having to lug around a shopping bag full of pennies after his cash is inadvertently changed. Once he is thawed out, the pair’s oddball chemistry begins to emerge, with Herb pushing Charles to approach the island’s sole shopkeeper Amanda (Sian Clifford, of Fleabag fame) and invite her to the gig.

Because of how effective the film is as a conventional comedy, you can almost lose track of how integral the musical element is. Yet, the songs are terrific – they are both ear-worms and also melancholic enough to justify Charles’s superfandom. The climactic gig itself, whilst possibly leaving some dampness around the eyes, is a grin inducing joy.