I review every movie I watch, and the reviews are all here. But when you scan for movies, you’ll notice that I don’t have too many reviews lately. That means I am not doing much watching these days. I am also not checking on what’s playing, most of the time.
Last weekend, my wife decided she wanted to take me to the movies. She picked one, didn’t tell me what it was, and I walked into the theater not having any idea about what I was going to see.
There is a remote island somewhere in the U.K. that can be reached only by small boats with outboard motors. There isn’t even a dock, so visitors have to get off the boat while the surf is rocking it, stepping knee deep, or worse, into the ocean. That’s how remote Wallis Island is. There is a little general store, and a lone phone booth, and a villa on top of the bluff. Charles lives alone in the villa. His wife died some years ago. He can afford the villa because he won the lottery.
His favorite musicians are the folk duo McGwyer Mortimer. Herb McGwyer is a songwriter, singer and performer. He is still active as a musician, with an agent and a career, but slightly past his prime. Nell Mortimer was his partner, a singer and piano player. They recorded many albums together in their day, and they were lovers. Something caused them to split up years ago, and they went their separate ways.
Charles hires them for one private gig on the island. Herb is going there to perform to a party of “less than a hundred people” but he does not know Nell is also coming. Over a few days of acclimating, Herb realizes that the gig has exactly one – and only one – person in the audience: Charles. When Nell shows up, the boundaries between making music and romance quickly blur, and emotions run wild.
The Ballad of Wallis Island is a delightful story about artists on the other side of their prime, about lost love and nostalgic longing, about the quirkiness of life on a lonely island, about human emotions and passion. There is humor, but it’s quirky humor, and there are songs that resonate with the soul.
I loved every minute of it. I want my wife take me on more “blind movie” dates.
