The Ballad of Wallis Island ★★★

Availability: Still showing in some theaters nationally and internationally. Widely available for rent or purchase, including online at AppleTV, Prime Video, and Peacock. See JustWatch here for full online and purchase options.

Letting Go

“Making the couple” is the basic trope of the rom-com genre. But which couple? There are at least 3 couples, maybe 4, all of them in need of making, remaking or, perversely, unmaking, in director James Griffiths’ fascinating, complex, and powerful drama, set on a remote, rocky, rain-sodden island off the coast of Wales.

To Herb (Tom Basden), singing duets with his ex-partner and ex-lover

Nell (Carey Mulligan) brings back suppressed desire.

Visitors to the dockless redoubt inevitably reach the beach soaked to the knee or worse. One of them is Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden), a musician of middling repute, who has come to this shore of Wallis Island (population less than 5) to give a concert to—well, he’ll find out—and make a suitcase full of money. Herb is physically uncomfortable (wet most of the time), emotionally withdrawn, unlikeable, and self-consumed, especially by his career as a solo artist, which isn’t going quite as well as he’d expected or been as satisfying as he had hoped.

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Charles is a well-meaning chatterbox who never heard a word he couldn’t pun.

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Herb is met at the boat by Charles (Tim Key), who is funding the upcoming sea-side performance and hosting Herb at his big house on the hill. Charles is a well-meaning, likeable but yes, irritating (to the easily irritated Herb) chatterbox who never heard a word he couldn’t pun and who doesn’t know the meaning of privacy, which is what Herb would like just some of. As different as they are—one seemingly always in bad humor, the other in good—man-children Herb and Charles, as we’ll learn, have more than a little in common.

The plot thickens when, to Herb’s (temporary) chagrin, his ex-partner Nell (they separated ten years ago) arrives on the island, brought there by Charles to recreate with Herb the duets the couple once sang and recorded, and on which Charles is fixated, if only because they remind him of the relationship he once had with his beloved wife. The concert, soon revealed to be for an audience of 1 (“I said less than 100”), is to commemorate to the day her death 5 years ago.

Having left Herb when he opted to become a solo artist, Nell (a fetching Carey Mulligan) is happily married and living the simple life; she makes chutney for the Portland farmers’ market. She arrives with her husband, Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen)—amiable (in contrast to Herb, Michael delights in Charles’s puns), intelligent, and so brazenly self-confident and sure of the strength of their relationship that he does the one thing no sentient man would do: he goes birding for two days, leaving his wife and her former lover alone, together. Uh oh!

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Herb and Nell rehearse tender melodies in what passes for foreplay....

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With Michael off in the wild in search of puffins, Herb and Nell rehearse tender melodies in what passes for foreplay, at least for Herb, who takes Nell’s gaze, her head on his shoulder, sweet harmonies (and flirtatious bathroom antics) as signs. He also must digest Nell’s pointed and germane critique of the cover of his latest album, titled FEAT and “FEATuring” the faltering celebrity with photo-shopped whitened teeth.

At the most intense of Herb and Nell’s moments together, the film raises the question of whether the music they share can be separated from the chemistry it would seem to require and the sentiment it evokes. Nell thinks so; for her they’re just songs and it’s just music-making. Herb does not, as he makes all too clear. Here the script errs, with Nell resolving the issue, reducing its subtleties to the awkwardly elemental—with one word. That word also simplifies and defines Michael and Nell’s relationship, without its ever having been explored or tested. Herb, however, is learning, albeit in fits and starts.

The good-natured—if irritatingly chatty—Charles (Tim Key), right, brings together his little trio—here on the beach with Herb (Basden), left, and Nell (Mulligan), center—

to send out over the sea wishes written on paper.

While Charles’s life as a widower has the feel of perpetual bachelorhood, there is an Eve on the island. Innocent and unguarded, Amanda (Sian Clifford) runs what passes for the island’s general store. She’s never heard of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (“we have peanut butter,” she says, and, holding up a mug, “you could put it in a cup”) and thinks in lieu of rice (“we have pasta!”), rice pudding will dry out Herb’s phone, which is as water-logged as he is. Full of misdirection, the script offers up yet another potential couple to be made.

Excellent acting pervades the film; with one exception, the main characters (and there are few others) give credible performances. Basden and Key, who also wrote the screenplay, save the best lines for themselves, though Amanda is funny in a way that’s both tart and naïve. Ndifornyen as Michael flits in and out of the picture, delivering some plot-driven lines that don’t work for the character. Would an emotionally savvy and intelligent guy come back from birding to spend 5 minutes with Herb just to tell him, “You’re a joke”?

Comic and seriocomic scenes abound, including themes of water (from the sea to a running tap, a couple’s watery embrace) and money—there’s lots of it around, especially for the conflicted anti-capitalist Herb, who carries coins in a large plastic bag, and whose communications are consigned to an anachronistic pay phone.

The film’s frenetic and yet satisfying finale includes a concert, an audience of more than 1 (but less than 100), couples made and unmade, puzzles to solve, ambiguities to parse. As in any good rom-com, along with the laughs, there are lessons to be learned, or at least for our small group, contemplated.

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He says: We almost passed this one up, because the trailer made the picture look so banal.

She says: We are led to evaluate the characters in part on how they respond to Charles—is he irritating or charming? The good or bad humor may not be so much in the object of the gaze as in the viewer.

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Date: 2025

Director: James Griffiths

Starring: Tom Basden, Tim Key, Carey Mulligan, Sian Clifford, Akemnji Ndifornyen

Country: United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 99 minutes

Other Awards: 2 nominations, 1 at SXSW Film Festival