The Ballad of Wallis Island: A Quiet Little Gem

A One Mann’s Movies review of “The Ballad of Wallis Island” (2025).

My thanks to Callum Jones, Deputy Business Editor of the US Guardian, and his wonderful wife Bethany for first bringing this one to my attention. They raved about it after seeing it in New York and said we should see it as soon as we could. It’s taken a while to get a UK release, but it is now out. And I concur… it’s a little gem of a film.

The film is based on a 2007, 24-minute, short film called “The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island”, also co-written and starring Tom Basden and Tim Key and directed by James Griffiths . It won the “Best Short Film” at the Edinburgh Film Festival and was nominated for the BAFTA. Here it has been fleshed out to feature film length and expanded to include the delightful presence of the wonderful Carey Mulligan and Sian Clifford.

Bob the Movie Man Rating:

*The plot thickens as Charles (Tim Key) welcomes Nell and Michael. An uncomfortable reunion for Herb (Tom Basden). (Source: Focus Features).*

“The Ballad of Wallis Island” Plot:

Charles (Tim Key) is a socially awkward and reclusive man living a lonely life on the remote Wallis Island. He has requested the presence of his musical idol – Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) – to perform a very intimate (“less than 100 people”) concert on the island. Herb arrives to an immediate soaking and an alarming introduction to Charles’s quirky world. It’s even more of a surprise when he finds that his lost-love and former music partner, Nell (Carey Mulligan), has also been invited to the island and Charles is ‘putting the band back together’.

Certification:

UK: 12A; US: PG-13. (From the BBFC web site: “Moderate bad language”.)

Talent:

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

Directed by: James Griffiths.

Written by: Tom Basden & Tim Key.

Running Time: 1h 39m.

“The Ballad of Wallis Island” Summary:

Positives:

A glorious, gently-comic, feelgood drama about moving on and embracing the future.
Strong acting performances from the main leads.
Beautiful Welsh scenery.

Negatives:

A wet note is near impossible to read.
I wasn’t keen on a moment between Herb and Michael.
The comedy is very “Alan Partridge” in terms of its awkwardness, which might not entirely hit the right note with some viewers.

Review of “The Ballad of Wallis Island”:

A delight.

Two comedy-laden films in two days. I laughed at the gory humour underneath “Clown in a Cornfield” yesterday. But here I laughed again – multiple times… it smashed the six-laugh test – but against a very different backdrop. “The Ballad of Wallis Island” is one of those rare beasts…. a situational comedy that both made me giggle endlessly, surprised me with its story and actually, on more than one occasion, moved me to tears. As long as you can engage with the style of comedy (see below), you are in for a real treat with this one.

Characters that fly off the screen.

Each character is perfectly crafted.

Charles (Tim Key) is both a work of comic genius and a character to be pitied. I won’t spoil his backstory: a tale of two massive highs and a terrible low. But he feels like someone who has really been through that wringer and is perfectly portrayed as diffident and emotionally elusive: always trying to divert from his real feelings with his constant babble of wonderful ‘Charlesisms’. (When he meets Herb, he is not just wet but “Dame Judi…. Dame Judi drenched”!) Charles has hidden depths though: some of his actions could be described as manipulative or even damned near bullying.
Herb (Tom Basden), not his real name, is a fading music star who’s best workc, co-produced with Nell Mortimer, is behind him. His recent solo efforts have been desperate collaborations with young, hip artistes that you know have gone straight into the discount bins. He’s a man lost, only buoyed up by his own sense of ego: a balloon that sprung a slow leak many years before.
Nell (Carey Mulligan) has a new life in the US with husband Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen) and appears to neither need or want the throwbacks to the past…. or does she?
And finally, there’s Amanda (Sian Clifford), the local village shopkeeper who never has anything that you want but improvises (poorly!). You never learn of the backstory of Amanda or how she ended up there alone with her teenage son.
And finally, having Nell’s husband Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen) as an American is a good call in that his rather brash attitude contrasts so nicely with the British reserved-ness of Charles. Michael has a relatively small amount of screen-time as he is off viewing a ‘circus of puffins’ (every day’s a school day!).

Acting that lives up to those rich characters.

Tim Key has always tended to play a bit of a secondary role in his movie appearances: as sidekick (Simon) to Alan Partridge in “Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa“; as a police commissioner in “See How They Run“; as a priest in “Wicked Little Letters“; and most recently, even as a strange pigeon-man cum jester in “Mickey 17“! Here he justly gets a leading role and absolutely slays it. His portrayal of Charles, with all his quirks and insecurities, is absolutely pitch-perfect. There’s a moment around the dinner table where Charles first hears Herb and Nell play together and tears up that is a superb piece of acting, genuinely deserving of awards consideration. Magical. A ‘movie moment’ of 2025 for me.

Tom Basden is pretty unknown to me. He has almost exclusively done TV work (he co-wrote and starred in “Plebs” and also had a key role in the Ricky Gervais brilliant “Afterlife”), but he did have a role in 2016’s “David Brent: Life on the Road“. He occupies the role of Herb so convincingly that I half-expected him, like David Bowie in his movie roles, to actually turn out to be a ‘music star turned actor’ when I looked him up.

Carey Mulligan! It’s no secret that I just love Carey Mulligan. I mean, I know she is happily married to Marcus Mumford. And I am very happily married to the illustrious Mrs Movie Man. And I know she’s young enough to be my eldest daughter. I’m just saying, at some point in some possible future, if I get to save her as the sole survivors from a catastrophic blimp accident at a Mumford and Sons concert we are all attending….

Here she is simply delightful, and gets the chance to sing folk music again as she did in “Inside Llewyn Davis“: in fact, although that film was set in 1961, this film almost feels like it could be the prequel to “Wallis Island”, thrown 15 years forwards with Tom Basden in the Oscar Isaac role.

And Sian Clifford, most famous for being Fleabag’s sister in that TV classic but also with a range of film roles under her belt such as “See How They Run“, “Chevalier” and most recently “Young Woman and the Sea” absolutely shimmers with charm in the small but pivotal role of Amanda. She’s not yet regarded as such, but I quietly predict that Clifford will be viewed as one of our national acting treasures as the years go by.

Beautiful locations.

“Wallis Island” doesn’t exist, although the external shots of the island seem to be reported as Ramsey Island in Pembrokeshire with most of the rest of the film being shot on a secluded beach somewhere on the mainland coast. (They seem to be being a bit coy about exactly where this was filmed). It’s beautiful scenery for sure and the remoteness and wildness is just what the story calls for.

I’m so squeakingly close to giving this one 5 stars.

There are just a few little wrinkles that give me pause about giving this little gem 5 stars.

Firstly, there is a key plot point where something wet with writing on is shown and you are supposed to be able to read what’s written. Note to the filmmakers: you can’t! Not even on the big screen! I guess if you were watching this at home, then you could rewind and freeze the frame to give you a better chance. In fact, I predict that this will get nearly as many ‘rewinds and freezes’ as that famous scene from “Basic Instinct” when it finally gets to streaming!

Secondly, there are some harsh words said to Herb by Michael in their parting which felt somewhat unnecessary and detracted from the feelgood nature of the piece for me. It’s a minor point. But after the wonderful feelgood high reached from a fabulous and extremely moving firelit beach scene, this felt like a bit of a mood-dropper that the film didn’t really need.

One caveat.

One minor caveat I would drop in as a final comment is that the film does lean towards the sort of squirm-worthy comic antics of Alan Partridge and David Brent. Tim Key’s comments are pretty much those of ‘Sidekick Simon’, but taken out of the studios of ‘North Norfolk Digital’. If you are really irritated by this type of humour, then Charles may be a character that you don’t get on with. The Illustrious Mrs Movie Man falls into that category and as it started she really didn’t think she was going to like it: but she warmed to it as more characters were introduced and the ‘Charlesisms’ were diluted a bit.

*Newly arrived. Nell (Carey Mulligan) and Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen). (Source: Focus Features).*

Monkey?

There is no monkey (you’re welcome). But we do get a recorded music track of “The Ballad of Wallis Island”, notably being performed by one Chris Pinner (which you’ll only understand if you see the film)!