Wah-Wah

I've passed this one on the shelf a dozen times and happened to pick it up as my wife doesn't like dark comedy, shoot'em-ups or slap-stick. I knew it was a winner just seeing Gabriel Byrne, Miranda Richardson and Emily Watson. But, the story was excellent, young Nicholas Hoult was outstanding with the support of such talent like Julia Waters, Celia Imrie. Writer/Director Richard E. Grant has captured the petty intrigues and back-biting found in the British ex-pat colonial service of the 60s, along with the trysts, scandals and class distinction. The setting and depiction of the African scenes are breathtaking, albeit the focus is on the Brits in the process of returning this country to the Swazi. All in all, a great story, rife with human interest, fraught with human frailties and painted on a touching but not maudlin canvas and well worth watching.

Saw Wah-Wah at the Edinburgh International Film Festival – this is a really wonderful film. The story is told from the point of view of Ralph, a child witnessing the breakdown of his parent's marriage and dealing with his father's alcoholism and hasty remarriage. Both the colonial life and the adult relationships are seen, unflatteringly, from Ralph's perspective, and this could easily have been just another caricature of colonial decadence and the end of empire. In fact, despite the sombre story, it has humour and warmth as well as emotional impact. It also looks stunning: it is hard to believe this is Richard Grant's first film. All the cast give strong performances, even if most of them are hardly playing against type: Celia Imry could probably do the "upper-class bitch" and Julie Walters the "blowsy but good-hearted neighbour" in their sleep: but the core relationship between Ralph and his father Harry, played by Gabriel Byrne, is just electrifying. Byrne is totally convincing as the dedicated colonial administrator whose unresolved feelings for his first wife and fears for his future after independence drive him to alcoholism and nearly wreck his second marriage (to the also excellent Emily Watson). According to the press the film has yet to find a distributor: let's hope it is quickly picked up – this is ten times better than any of this summer's blockbusters, and deserves to be seen.

Richard E. Grant's mostly autobiographical film tells the story of a boy growing up in Swaziland amidst the end of British colonisation, his parents' harrowing divorce and his father's destructive alcoholism.

Before the film I was promised it would make me cry, laugh and be totally delighted with what I saw.

The tears come from some very moving moments between Ralph (Nicholas Hoult) and his father as they try to maintain a relationship despite his father's drinking problems, depicted by a very frightening and convincing Gabriel Byrne. Ralph's struggle to accept his father's new wife, played by Emily Watson, also gives us a good dose of emotional moments, of which this film is certainly not short!

The laughter comes mostly from some moments of brilliantly over-the-top British snobbery and Emily Watson's spot-on mockery of it. Incidentally, this is what gives the film its title - "Wah-Wah" being her imitation of upper class speech.

And the delightfulness comes from everything about the film - a sentimental and touching story set amongst beautiful scenery, with a lovely score and stunning performances from all the cast. Having spent 5 years on this film, it is clearly very personal to Grant and it seems all that time was worth it. The promise was fulfilled - delight, laughter and tears.

Forget the sniping review on this site. This is a labour of love and is the true story of a young boy growing up in end-of-the-colonial-era Swaziland. His loving but alcoholic father, his faithless mother and the various other upper crust Brits are bang on the button. The film was made in a very short time, came in under budget and gives us some delightful performances. Both the boys, Zac Fox and Nick Holt, are excellent. Gabriel Byrne, Emily Watson, Celia Imrie and National Treasure Julie Walters are great. The story is told economically in just 90 or so minutes. The scenery is beautiful. What a pleasant change from over praised short-arse Hollywood 'icons' running away from explosions. Forget MI3.Go see this. Then read Richard's book 'The Wah-wah diaries.'

Wah-Wah (Richard E. Grant, 2005) is a delightful film about writer-director Grant's childhood during the final throes of colonial Swaziland. Balancing fraughtness - as his alter-ego's mother (Miranda Richardon) leaves and his father (Gabriel Byrne) descends into alcoholism - with superbly judged comic passages, it transports the viewer into the head of the young protagonist, perfectly articulating his feelings without the need for speechifying or voice-over. Such a feat is testament to the economy and precision of the script, Grant's subtle but expressive direction and Nicholas Hoult's excellent performance as the 14-year-old Ralph Compton. That Hoult can hold his own against Emily Watson, the most gifted dramatic performer of her generation, is as high praise as I can think of. Watson is ideal, as ever, playing the boy's ballsy American step-mum, who's threatening to turn high society on its ear if she can stand the scotch-swilling company long enough. The film does suffer from a dearth of geographic context in the mid-section and has some structural problems in the second half that seem to saddle it with several false endings, but it's clever, subtle and formidably unsentimental, with superb acting across the board. Its more painful exchanges have the unmistakable ring of truth and grim memory, and there's a great set of scenes in which Hoult sees A Clockwork Orange and starts idly apeing McDowell's eyeliner-wearing sociopath. I really liked it.