A study of British eccentricity and reticence that uses its remote island setting to explore the extremities of grief and the inability to truly repeat the past, The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffiths, 2025) is a proper tearjerker. But like the best ones, it deserves every single drop; one cutesy folk song at a time.
Our hero is Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden), a cynical folk singer formerly of the renowned duo McGwyer Mortimer. Having gone solo many years ago, his work has become more and more collaboration-heavy, made to resemble something like Ed Sheeran without the charm or business acumen. Meanwhile, the estranged other half, former lover and collaborator Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan), is more like if Laura Marling quit straight after A Creature I Don’t Know (2011) — a 00s folk legend frozen eternally in another era.11. Unlike the Marling we know today, who is still putting out well-received albums. Unlike Ed Sheeran.
Both sides of this duo (with exceptionally good songs, created by Adem Ilhan) are unexpectedly foisted upon one another when they are invited to the eponymous Wallis Island for a secret gig by the mysterious Charles Heath (Tim Key). The audience: “under one hundred.” Soon, it becomes clear that this will be the tiniest gig they have ever played. Flush with cash from winning the lottery (twice!), he will literally be the only person in attendance.
It seems like territory for high farce — and it is! The quirks of remote island life are fleshed out in great detail, as well as McGwyer’s inability to get his soaked phone to turn on, or the increasing revelations about Heath’s unhealthy obsession with getting the duo back together, as well as the intricacies of his absurd wealth. But beneath this comic plot is a deeply effective rumination on re-attaining an impossible past, all the more effective for how it slowly but surely sneaks up on you.
At its core, the film rests upon Key’s truly remarkable performance, hiding deep feeling underneath an incredible torrent of nonsense words and phrases. For one thing, Heath is a poetry book unto himself. Whether it’s delightful rhymes (“wowzers in my trousers”), puns on actors names (“Dame Judi Drenched”), bad taste wordplay (referring to his latest cooking effort as “Dr Curried Shipman”) or the brilliant way he downplays the provided accomodation as “a hotel in all but name and facilities,” Heath is one of the most memorable British creations I’ve seen on a cinema screen in a long time.
I’d previously only clocked Key, best known as Alan Partridge’s sidekick Simon, as a comic actor, and in many ways, this is still a comic performance; it’s the way the tragedy seeps through the “holy fool” persona that gives Wallis Island its brilliant emotional effect. It helps that both he and Basden wrote the script as well as the 2007 short the film is based upon; their entire personality and feeling seem bound up in these characters.
In the way he goes to massive lengths to spend money to recreate an idealised past, Heath strikes a kind of Gatsbyesque figure. Gatsby, of course, responds to Nick Carraway’s line that “you can’t repeat the past” with “why, of course you can!” — imagining that his vast wealth is enough to win back the love of his life. But unfortunately, Nick Carraway is still right; you really can’t repeat what was. That doesn’t mean you should let it slip away from you either. This film gathers a surprisingly immense power in its brief evocation of a more innocent time, before gently crashing it against the waves of fate, borne back ceaselessly…22. That’s enough now (Ed).
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.