Let me confess I am a huge fan of ABBA. Not that the sweet Swedish have anything directly to do with James Griffith’s euphonious The Ballad Of Wallis Island. But there is a wonderful sequence where the once-famous folk singer is introduced to the local grocer as a leading folksinger. The lady smiles back and says, “I only listen to ABBA.”
The Ballad Of Wallis Island, so aptly titled, is about two singers who once dated and validated a band named McGwyer Mortimer. Now, they have gone their separate ways (unlike ABBA, who in spirit at least, still remain one).
Only to be re-employed by a goodhearted islander to perform privately for him.
This pretty fragile but compelling film’s mainstay, the backbone so to speak, is the isolated scenic Welsh island where the washed-out folk singer Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) arrives. Herb is immediately inveigled by the overpowering attention of his host Charles (Tim Key), who is a reinvented version of the traditional fan of musicians who fawns and crosses lines.
But wait. This one is different. There is something unique about the fan-worship of Charles. He talks non-stop and surprisingly never trips over his words. He wants his favourite folk duo to be reunited just once, with the same fervour that brought the Beatles together after years of separation.
With the folk-duo Herb McGwyer and Nell Mortimer (the amazing Carey Mulligan), it is different. Their fractured dynamism entails sexual and emotional dynamics that make it impossible for them to make music together.
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But make music, they must at any cost. Their host Charles won’t have it any other way.
The Ballad Of Wallis Island is the kind of gently undulating cinema that we thought was gone forever. But here it is! A film that doesn’t fear treading the fragile emotional frontiers even at the cost of seeming way too languorous in pace by today’s breathless cinematic standards.
Barring Carey Mulligan, who is as usual so befitting she seems a precondition, the other principal actors are relatively untried. They seem like people whom we know vaguely but wouldn’t mind knowing better.
When early in the proceedings, Herb goes to the island store to get rice to soak the water out of his phone, he is told there is no rice.
“But we have rice pudding,” offers the grocer Amanda (Sian Clifford). Yes, the same lady who only listens to ABBA.
This is a world cloistered in a cultural bubble. And in no hurry to escape.
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