In ‘The Ballad of Wallis Island,' a reunion concert for one sets the stage for a bittersweet story

Boston Globe

26-03-2025

After years of isolation, Charles is giddy about meeting Herb and can't stop blathering on, though his ebullience only irritates the perpetually wounded singer. In a recent video interview, Key, who co-wrote the movie with Basden, says Charles's nervous energy is the 'motor' for the film's humor, with Herb finding himself increasingly on edge as one thing after another goes awry.
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'It's a classic dynamic, like 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles' — when one character is annoyed by another, the audience can enjoy the irritant from a safe distance,' Basden said, noting that Key being so 'funny and lovable' helps.
When Herb gets soaked trudging from boat to beach, Charles refers to him as 'Dame Judi Drenched.' Charles sells Herb on the island's charms by saying, 'The beauty of this island is the silence,' then gestures to the gorgeous vista and, unable to help himself, talks over the silence, adding 'and the beauty.' (The island is fictional; the movie was largely filmed along the coast of Wales.)
Charles's babbling, especially his wordplay, comes from the fact that the duo and their group of friends 'are not afraid of a pun, which can be partly funny but also just funny that someone would actually say something so rubbish,' Key said. 'Gradually, we've both learned that the stupid stuff that we say to each other has an authenticity and the seal of approval because your friends have already laughed at it.'
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Another dynamic comes into play when Nell's arrival churns up Herb's hurts and desires. That she's now married and brought her husband along only exacerbates tensions. The film is simultaneously silly and sweet; a poignant look at healing from loss and finding oneself. It is not, despite the setup, a rom-com.
Carey Mulligan and Tom Basden in "The Ballad of Wallis Island."
Alistair Heap/Focus Features
Director James Griffiths (whose TV work includes 'Bad Sisters' and 'Black-ish') said there was a 'conscious effort' to steer clear of that genre. 'We were keen to avoid those tropes,' he said. 'Herb is living in his version of a romantic comedy, and he projects that onto Nell, but she's really well-adjusted.'
Herb McGwyer is actually a stage name, which Basden said is crucial: 'There's an artifice to him, and even to his way of understanding the past, that he needs to strip away. The name ramps up the idea that his persona — the thing that Charles has loved — is a fabrication and that the best thing is to give it all up completely.'
The film began as a 2007 short film focused on Charles and Herb. Key and Basden, who were in a sketch-comedy group and living together, had aspiring director friends looking for material. Griffiths met both while filming a commercial (casting Basden over Key for the part) and wanted to use that money to make a short.
In that short, neither Herb nor Charles had endured the romantic loss that imbues the feature with its pathos. Still, unlike some of their early comedic shorts — like one where a policeman chases a thief into a maze and neither can escape — 'there was something at its heart that was compelling and lived beyond its comic setup,' said Basden.
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'We felt the characters would sustain a feature so we kept going back to it,' Key said, adding that they grew as writers in the intervening years.
'It's good we didn't write it back then,' Basden continued. 'We've been through that first, optimistic stage of a career, and there's something about looking back on that with a bit of wisdom. If we made this film straight away back then, it might have been funny, but I don't think it would've had the same heart.'
Adding Nell gave Herb a former life and his songs (which Basden wrote) extra heft, the duo said. 'When we started thinking about what the music meant to Charles, we began to see how the film could work emotionally,' Basden said.
That combination is what enabled them to land a legitimate movie star to play Nell.
Mulligan loved her character and 'that the film had compassion without sentimentality,' she said. 'The people have grace for one another — maybe not initially, but they can look at another person they don't understand, and find something that makes sense and then change their mind.'
The actress, who's married to Mumford & Sons lead singer Marcus Mumford, also appreciated how the movie captured musicians, 'the ease with which two people will just pick up a guitar and start singing a song,' she said. 'That's not my world, but I've always thought it's unbelievably cool.'
Griffiths says as they cut the film down in editing, the goal was to 'make sure we didn't veer into being too self-aware. We wanted it to be really truthful and authentic. We wanted these characters to be eccentric but not unbelievable.'
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That can be a tricky balancing act, especially while tossing in silly jokes amid the angst and even anguish. 'I don't know how we did it, and doing it again may be quite difficult,' Key said. 'It just sort of fell into place quite naturally.'
Stuart Miller can be reached at
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