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As actor/filmmaker Richard E. Grant said of Hollywood’s current output recently in The Guardian, “Audiences will queue round the block to see an unimaginably highly-paid film star running away from a fantastically expensive explosion. They think it’s their money’s worth. I despair that’s what people have to do.”
If you happen to feel the same way about the current state of the cinema, consider seeing Wah-Wah, Grant’s own debut as a writer/director.
He calls it a coming-of-age film set at the end of an age; it’s the story of his own adolescence in Swaziland just as the country gained independence from Britain.
Wah-Wah is set in the late ’60s, as British colonial rule petered out for good. It’s all veddy proper among the expats, not counting extreme alcohol intake and boffing other people’s spouses for sport.
The film opens with a little boy, Ralph, lying down in the back seat of his mother’s car. The adults think he’s asleep. He isn’t. This is how Ralph happens to witness his mother (Miranda Richardson) having sex with someone who isn’t his father. His parents’ marriage falls apart and our young lad goes off to boarding school.
On a trip home from school, Ralph (Nicholas Hoult, About A Boy) learns that his father (Gabriel Byrne) has remarried on a whim. His stepmother, Ruby (Emily Watson), is an American who uses the expression “Wah-wah” to describe how the upper-class-twitisms used in conversation by the English sound to her. Ruby and Ralph eventually become close, united in their outsider stance in the community. They are also united in their need to do something about dad’s violent behaviour when he’s drunk.
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Among other players in the British community in Africa are Lady Hardwick (Celia Imrie), the boss of all social matters, and Gwen Traherne (Julie Walters), a family friend whose husband has run off with Ralph’s mother. All are a-twitter at the news that Princess Margaret will attend the independence ceremonies in Swaziland; Ralph’s father, who is minister of education, assumes he will lose his job and everthing else once independence comes, and he drinks heavily to compensate.
Wah-Wah is a story told completely from a child’s perspective, which gives it a particular emotional charge. The loss of his mother, the need to parent his own father and the bewildering behaviour of the adults around him are all conveyed from Ralph’s point of view. And children miss nothing.
Wah-Wah is both tragic and very funny, an accurate snapshot of adolescence and a glimpse of the transformative power of art.
Nearly all the incidents in Wah-Wah are based on real events in Richard E. Grant’s life, including a scene in which his very drunk father chases him with a loaded gun. All the performances in the film are superb, but how Gabriel Byrne handles the tricky role of father is a wonder to behold.
BOTTOM LINE: Good story, good storytelling. This is a movie for people who’ve almost given up on going to the movies.
(This film is rated 14A)