Irish Film Institute -WAH-WAH

WAH-WAH

Director: RICHARD E. GRANT

U.K. • FRANCE-SOUTH AFRICA • 2005 • COLOUR • DOLBY DIGITAL STEREO • 97 MIN.


BASED ON ACTOR RICHARD E. GRANT’S EARLY TEENAGE YEARS IN SWAZILAND AND SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF ITS YOUNG PROTAGONIST, WAH-WAH IS A BITTERSWEET, SEMIAUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMING-OF-AGE TALE.
This unflinching portrait of his troubled family—alcoholic father, feckless mother, young American stepmother is set against the backdrop of an incestuous ex-pat community as it faces up to the end of British colonial rule. When his mother Lauren (Miranda Richardson) runs off with a married man, and his father Harry (Gabriel Byrne) takes to the bottle, eleven year-old Ralph Compton is packed off to boarding school. Two years later, Ralph (Nicholas Hoult from About A Boy) returns to find his father married to Ruby (Emily Watson), an American air hostess he has known for only six weeks. Although initially resentful of this interloper, Ralph is slowly won over by his convention-flouting stepmother, not least because of her disregard for the linguistic absurdities (Toodlepip!) and small-minded prejudices of the moribund ex-pat community. However, as rehearsals begin for an amateur dramatic production of Camelot, to mark a visit by Princess Margaret and the lowering of the Union Jack, trouble is afoot. Ralph’s real mother—abandoned by her lover—returns to wreak social and emotional havoc. Given his thespian background, it is no surprise that Richard E. Grant draws uniformly strong performances from an exceptional ensemble cast. But as the sun sets on yet another corner of the Empire, Grant and his talented French cinematographer, Pierre Aim, also capture the beauty of an African landscape bathed in a soft, fading orange light. —Nigel Floyd.

RICHARD E. GRANT is touring with the film, and we hope to welcome him to the IFI Cinemas at the time of the release of his film – please check our website and press ads for further details.

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