The Ballad of Wallis Island is a dopey grin movie. You’d think when the adjective “dopey” gets used in relation to a movie, it would be in the context of making fun of it, but you’d be wrong. This is the kind of movie where you get lost in the details, in the world it creates, and when you awaken momentarily from your reverie and become self-aware, you realise you’ve been staring at the screen with a big dopey grin on your face.

The Ballad of Wallis Island is the kind of movie MIFF needs as an ambassador to the regions, which it will be when it plays at a variety of regional cinemas this weekend. (Check here for exact locations and times.) It’s definitely “MIFFy” in the sense that it comes from an eccentric perspective, but it’s also uncommonly warm, making it a good gateway movie for anyone out there considering a trip in to Melbourne for next year’s festival.

In fact, James Griffiths’ film has a little bit of what the Irish movie Once had going on, only it’s not two harmonising singers who’ve just met each other. It’s two harmonising singers who have a long history, and the choice not to stay together – either personally or professionally – was made the better part of a decade ago. Oh, and it’s got their biggest fan, who has called them to a remote Island off Britain to unwittingly reunite for a gig with a very select audience.

Charles Heath (Tim Key) is the eccentric who drives the tone, a man with a bushy beard, a sweet but occasionally feisty temperament, and a general failure to understand social cues, who lives on a fictitious island so lacking in permanent residents that it doesn’t even have a proper dock to receive boats. Visitors must wade to the shore in a metre’s worth of water, carrying their bags as clear from the waves as they can manage, and trying not to get their mobile wet in the process. And if you do, you might find that the local shop doesn’t even carry the rice that might revive its former functionality.

Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden, who wrote the script with Key) knows this because he’s just waded in metre-deep water and lost the functionality of his phone, meaning he has to shovel coins into the island’s one pay phone if he wants to call his manager. See Herb was once half of the indie folk band McGwyer Mortimer, though he’s since gone solo and changed his image considerably. He collaborates with pop stars with made-up monikers and his latest single is called “Work That Body.” You sense this brings him some shame.

The unfortunate drenching incident, exacerbated by his host’s klutziness, has put Herb in a rotten mood in the first place, and it only gets worse when he realises that the “Wallis Island Inn” is code for “Charles’ house.” It’s a big house – Charles got the $500,000 he’s paying Herb for the gig from somewhere – but Charles has very little sense of personal privacy, nor any sense when to stop talking in a manner equal parts nervous, whimsical, clever, and totally shut off from the outside world.

The next surprise is that the expected attendance for the gig is indeed “under 100 people,” as Charles tells him – like, 99 under 100. Yes this is a personal show for Charles, who has every album, poster, and bit of merchandise and memorabilia McGwyer Mortimer ever produced. Finally the last surprise is that Mortimer, whom Herb hasn’t seen in years, will also be performing. She’s Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan), and she currently has a husband she’s brought along with her (Akemnji Ndifornyen), and Herb might still be in love with her.

The ”remote community movie” has a bit of a chequered history. While this is a great location for a fish-out-of-water comedy, some films lean too heavily on the cheeky locals angle, trying our patience. The Ballad of Wallis Island is more intimate than that. We really only meet one other local beyond Charles, the shopkeeper Amanda (Sian Clifford), who would be Charles’ love interest if he had the courage to ask her out. She’s hilariously drawn, even more green than Charles – her scene trying to assemble the various parts of a “Reese’s peanut butter cup” for the city folk is especially good. Key’s line deliveries are also priceless in terms of the healthy sprinkling of humour. But in all, the film keeps this aspect in its proper secondary role, giving way to focus on the main three characters.

Where we get true richness indeed. These characters are keenly aware of what they’ve lost, what they might still have, and what they could maybe find again. A key component of The Ballad of Wallis Island is its sentimentality about times past, but the light touch of the director and screenwriters means that this never comes close to cloying. And while this is not nearly as musical as Once, in that you could not comprise an entire soundtrack of the McGwyer Mortimer songs you hear in this film, what we do hear – written by Basden and performed by Basden and Mulligan – is certainly enough to bring that wistfulness to the fore.

If they use nostalgia correctly, good films can tap into a universality that puts us in touch with the nostalgia from our own lives. The Ballad of Wallis Island is such a film. We all have simpler times when everything seemed to be better, when we all made sweet music, metaphorically or otherwise, with someone in our lives who is no longer there.

 

The Ballad of Wallis Island is playing this weekend at the Pivotonian Cinema in Geelong (Friday, 6:45 p.m.), Star Cinema in Bendigo (Saturday, 4 p.m.), Village Cinemas in Geelong (Sunday, 1 p.m.) and Peninsula Cinemas in Rosebud (Sunday, 1 p.m.), as well as a final metro session at the The Astor Sunday at 1 p.m. Tickets can be purchased here.