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The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
What is Britain's elusive 'national character'? The Ballad of Wallis Island might just tell us
It is, according to no less an authority than the romcom king Richard Curtis, destined to be 'one of the greatest British films of all time'. But don't let that put you off. For The Ballad of Wallis Island – the unlikely new tale of a socially awkward millionaire who inveigles two estranged former halves of a folk-singing duo into playing a private gig on his windswept private island – isn't some floppy-haired Hugh Grant vehicle, but a reflection on our national character that is altogether more of its times. It's a lovely, melancholic comedy about the acceptance of failure, loss and the slow understanding that what's gone is not coming back: an ode to rain and cardigans, lousy plumbing and worse puns, shot in Wales on a shoestring budget in a summer so unforgiving that a doctor was apparently required on set to check for hypothermia. Its main characters have not only all messed up at something – relationships, careers, managing money – but seem fairly capable of messing up again in future. Yet as a film it's both gloriously funny and oddly comforting, taking a world where everything seems to be slowly coming adrift and making that feel so much more bearable. There's no such thing as a national character really, of course; or at least no set of indisputably British traits on which 68 million people could ever all agree. Yet there's a clear pattern to how we like to see ourselves represented on screen – endearingly hopeless, perennially mortified, well-meaning but liable to be eaten alive by Americans – which is telling. There was much flapping recently about polling showing only 41% of generation Z say they're proud to be British, a steep decline on previous generations. But it remains unclear whether the issue here is gen Z, or the idea of Britain in which they have lately been expected to take pride. If Britishness didn't seem quite so puffed-up and aggressive, so relentlessly focused on who is deemed not British enough; if it could simultaneously embrace a more self-deprecating, more tolerant, distinctly embarrassed sense of national identity, would that be one with which some people felt more comfortable? For we are not, fundamentally, a 'make Britain great again' kind of place. Even when our politicians deliberately try to evoke the Maga spirit, they do it (thankfully) badly: Britain's answer to Elon Musk's terrifying Doge ('department of government efficiency'), as launched this week by the Reform party, is headed by some tech dweeb you've never heard of whose role essentially boils down to poking round Kent county council looking for 'waste', before presumably discovering that he hasn't really got the power to fire anyone. With all due respect to Rachel Reeves's mission to rebuild the nation, meanwhile, the most recognisably British part of her big speech on investing in infrastructure this week was that it revolved around regional buses. The pinnacle of our national ambitions is no longer to rule the waves but just to be able to get into Huddersfield a bit faster than previously, along a road with slightly fewer potholes, and it's time to own that with pride: this is, goddammit, who we really are. For this is the nation that made a copper-bottomed hit out of How to Fail, Elizabeth Day's podcast in which guests cheerfully spill the beans on all the ways they have screwed up at life; a nation that can't accept a compliment to save its life, and knows that if by accident you ever become good at something then you'd better make up for it fast by stressing just how bad you are at something else. (In this week's published extracts from How Not to Be a Political Wife, a British title for a memoir if ever there was one, the demonstrably successful and well-connected Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine returns again and again to the failure of her marriage and the impossibility of keeping up with high-powered friends: she's been in the newspaper business long enough to know her readers would infinitely rather hear about the fall than the rise.) We dwell with relish not just on our individual failings but on our glorious national defeats, memorialising all the football tournaments we ever lost on penalties and weaving heroic disasters – Scott dying in the Antarctic, the retreat from Dunkirk – into our national story. We are the country that turned 'we're shit, and we know we are' into a sporting anthem; that treats failure less as a necessary stage of innovation than as a steady state to be lived with, like the weather. Our tendency to assume things will go wrong certainly has its drawbacks – not least a tendency to regard unalloyed good news with crabby suspicion – but it perhaps makes us more philosophical when they do. Not so much a land of hope and glory, as one of perennial mild disappointment. In the past, this unerring ability to puncture our own balloons might have been a healthy trait, a safeguard against a world power getting carried away by its own importance. Of late, the same Eeyorish diffidence feels more like a way of coming to terms with inevitable decline. But either way, tucked inside The Ballad of Wallis Island is the germ of a national story: struggling to tell other people how we really feel about them, in the rain, but still somehow finding reasons to be cheerful. If that's not a version of Britishness we can all get behind, what is? Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
Irish Times
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Ballad of Wallis Island: ‘Anyone can hypothetically write Carey Mulligan into their little thing. She was top of our list'
The Ballad of Wallis Island is an excellent new British comedy drama starring Tim Key, Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan . Almost two decades in the making, the film expands on the much-admired short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island, from 2007. 'When we started writing it, me and Tom were living together and writing a lot,' says Key. 'We were young and prolific. We weren't two guys who'd had an idea and then decided to develop the characters. We had lots of different sketches that we were equally excited about. But for some reason this one felt like it could be longer than a sketch. 'We didn't have to work hard to find my character. He sort of existed as an amalgamation of teachers and uncles and venue managers. It felt very natural when we started doing it on camera. Then going back to it 17 years later was easy.' Key is a versatile comedian, actor and writer – he's renowned for his distinctive absurdist poetry and deadpan bent. His script (which he wrote with Basden) and cheery central performance make for a note-perfect movie. Key plays Charles, an eccentric double lottery winner living alone on a remote island. To commemorate the anniversary of his wife's death, Charles hands over vast sums of money for a private concert reuniting McGwyer & Mortimer, a favourite folk duo. READ MORE [ Along Came Love review: Diverting melodrama just about delivers on early promise of knotty personal drama Opens in new window ] The balladeers, Herb McGwyer and Nell Mortimer – played by Basden and Mulligan – are also former romantic partners. That both believe they're performing solo leads to a strained reunion. Nell also arrives with her new husband. 'Obviously, it makes a difference having Carey Mulligan's name on the project,' says Key. 'It was quite a surreal conversation. It felt like quite a hypothetical conversation. Anyone is allowed to dream. Anyone can hypothetically write Carey Mulligan into their little thing. She was the top of our list. When we reached out to her, the fact that she knew who we were and was amenable to reading the script was very exciting. From start to finish she was just incredible.' [ When the Light Breaks review: Emotionally astute drama is a bonsai miniature of overwhelming grief Opens in new window ] A hit at Sundance last January, The Ballad of Wallis Island has been praised by US critics as a 'sublime, adorable comedy' and 'the sort of hilarious heart-warmer that only comes around once or twice a year to offer a blessed break from darkness, snobbery and streaming schlock'. 'We couldn't have been happier with the way the Americans responded to the film,' says Key. 'It felt like a quirk of the universe that somehow this very British film would start in America. It was very surreal that the first time we saw it was in an auditorium with 1,400 people in Sundance. The first 30 seconds weren't easy, but then they started to laugh.' British panel shows such as Taskmaster and Richard Osman's House of Games are graced by a wealth of witty folk, but only one of that merry-go-round of presenters and panellists has published two volumes of lockdown-themed verse. 'I went up the garden centre,' Key's poem Flora opens. 'Finally! I bought a cactus and some mint things/ and asked the cashier out. After work, we went up the park. I couldn't kiss her because my tongue was/ less than two metres long.' Starting with the weightily titled Instructions, Guidelines, Tutelage, Suggestions, Other Suggestions and Examples Etc: An Attempted Book, Key has published six poetry collections and released a poetry album, Tim Key: With a String Quartet. On a Boat. His musings greatly enlivened Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, the much-missed TV review. 'That was a very interesting job,' says Key. 'I'd never written poetry prescriptively before. I usually just go to the pub for last orders and scribble. I definitely didn't know whether I'd be able to write about the news and serious themes. I don't really follow the news. Mostly I was constantly trying to work out what my angle was so I wouldn't be a complete disgrace.' Wanting to do comedy was like watching Wimbledon and thinking, Oh, I wouldn't mind competing at Wimbledon Key, who is 48, studied Russian at the University of Sheffield. After graduating he became involved with Footlights, the Cambridge sketch troupe, despite not attending that university. Pretending to be doing a PhD, he teamed up with Basden, Stefan Golaszewski and Lloyd Woolf to form the sketch troupe Cowards. 'I don't think it was particularly easy for my parents,' he says. 'They see a lot of potential in you and helped you to go to university. I don't know what they thought I would do, but trying to be a comedian probably wasn't on their list. They were incredibly supportive, but occasionally I'd hear phrases about journalism or conversation about law. At some point, three or four years in, I was on Radio 4 and they could tell people in the village.' In 2009 Key's solo show The Slutcracker won the Edinburgh Comedy Award. He has gone on to perform seven more solo shows. 'It was all very unexpected,' he says. 'I had a millimetre of the end of one toe in the comedy world when I was 24. When I was 23 I would have said I had absolutely no chance. I thought you had to have friends or family in the industry. I never felt that it was a real thing. I felt like I was living my life and things like The Two Ronnies were happening in a completely different universe. Wanting to do comedy was like watching Wimbledon and thinking, Oh, I wouldn't mind competing at Wimbledon.' In 2010 Key appeared as Sidekick Simon on Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge, an internet incarnation of Steve Coogan's satirical creation. Key has reprised the role in the BBC series This Time with Alan Partridge and in the 2013 film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa . It was a head-spinning experience for a former schoolboy fan of Partridge's first TV appearances in the parody news show The Day Today. 'It was petrifying,' says Key. 'I watched The Day Today as it came out. I loved Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci and Rebecca Front. I think you'd have to have a screw loose not to be worried. You don't want to ruin a franchise and let down your 16-year-old self. So it was quite high pressure, going to work that first day. And leaving work as well. I didn't know whether I'd done a good job. Now I'm very comfortable. I loved doing it.' The Ballad of Wallis Island: Tom Basden, Carey Mulligan and Tim Key. Photograph: Focus Features The Ballad of Wallis Island is Key's first leading role since a series of big-screen appearances that began with The Double, in 2013, and continued through Greed, See How They Run and Wicked Little Letters to, most recently, Bong Joon Ho's Mickey 17 . It's not quite Mulligan's glittering CV, but he knows his way around a set. 'It boggles the mind how many people were in the make-up team for Mickey 17,' says Key. 'Our film was a more familiar thing, where you're dealing with day-to-day things with maybe 17 other people, not 400. But someone from Mickey 17's make-up department would easily have done another film of our size and then probably three more in the last year. So we surround ourselves with the best people we can possibly find.' He has racked up additional TV credits on Time Trumpet, Inside No 9, The Witchfinder, Taskmaster and The End of the F**ing World. No wonder he gets recognised on the street. But for what? 'Peep Show is very high in the mix, just from doing two or three episodes,' he says. 'Obviously, Partridge. In London, sometimes people have seen me in a show. And, during lockdown, me and Alex Horne and Mark Watson did an online parlour game called No More Jockeys. That rose through the rankings of things people know me for. I think there's still a kind of cult following for that.' The Ballad of Wallis Island is in cinemas from Friday, May 30th
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tom Cruise Reportedly 'Set To Receive A Knighthood' Amid Rumored Romance With Ana de Armas
Tom Cruise could be awarded knighthood anytime soon as the British monarchy is reportedly considering conferring on him the prestigious honor for his contribution to British films. This comes as the actor's romance with Ana de Armas is reportedly heating up fast. The couple was recently spotted strolling through a London park on her 37th birthday. Tom Cruise is currently in Asia as he continues to promote his latest "Mission: Impossible" film. According to the Daily Mail, Cruise is "set to receive" the prestigious knighthood from the British monarch, as sources say his team "have been sounded out" already. Although there's no official confirmation from Buckingham Palace yet, the "Top Gun" star could possibly get the honor as early as next month in King Charles's Birthday Honours. Cruise wouldn't be the first American to be granted an honorary knighthood or damehood, as stars like Steven Spielberg, Angelina Jolie, and Bill Gates were all given the award by the late Queen Elizabeth II. The honor is the only title that can be granted to a non-British citizen. The 62-year-old actor has done quite a lot for British film and has chosen to shoot many of his movies on location in London, Birmingham, North Yorkshire, and the Lake and Peak Districts, which has brought in jobs and helped sharpen skill expertise and training. Cruise will also be decorated with the British Film Institute fellowship (BFI) on Monday for his services to UK film. According to the Daily Mail, the BFI would also acknowledge his support for the cinematic experience, as Cruise is one who always encouraged audiences to see all films on the big screen. The actor is currently in South Korea, where he's promoting his latest "Mission: Impossible" movie, which is set to be released in the US on May 23. Cruise said in a statement released by the BFI that he was "truly honoured" by the award. "I have been making films in the UK for over 40 years and have no plans to stop. The UK is home to incredibly talented professionals – actors, directors, writers, and crews – as well as some of the most stunning locations in the world. I'm grateful for all the BFI has done to support UK filmmaking and this incredible art form we share," the actor shared. It comes amid rumors suggesting the actor is in a romantic relationship with Ana de Armas after they were pictured several times together hanging out. According to Fox News, the pair were seen taking a stroll together as de Armas celebrated her birthday earlier this week. They looked cozy while walking down a path in a London park on the "Knives Out" star's 37th birthday. In a social media post, Cruise can be seen wearing a white polo t-shirt with dark blue jeans while de Armas sported a light-colored t-shirt with jeans, white sneakers, and a brown crossbody bag. In the clip, which was shared on social media, a dog that appeared to be de Armas' pooch Salsa was seen walking alongside the group. The couple also attended the actor's friend David Beckham's 50th birthday on May 2 and left together late at night in a car. Meanwhile, Cruise has seemingly given a peek into his work ethic and the philosophy of embracing challenges in producing new movies. "We have a saying, which is 'pressure is a privilege,'" the actor told reporters Thursday in Seoul, per The Korea Times. Cruise added, "The thing I also have realized about myself is how much I enjoy the pressure, how much I enjoy the responsibility of making movies." Cruise also weighed in on the fear involved in his daring stunts but emphasized his willingness to confront it. "People ask if I'm not scared when facing various difficulties. Honestly, I am," the actor said. "It's okay to feel those emotions, and I'm not afraid of them. I don't just look for what's safe." "It's not what I do, it's who I am," Cruise continued. "There hasn't been a day that I have not felt privileged, a day that I have not felt very grateful to be able to do what I do. Thank you for allowing me to entertain, it is an honor."
