Wah-Wah (2005)

I orginally wrote this DVD review for The Australian back in November 2006. Posting it here now to go with my review of The Wah-Wah Diaries.

As a boy, actor Richard E. Grant witnessed his mother having sex with his father’s best friend. Later, in an alcoholic rage, his father nearly shot him. This doesn’t make for much of a childhood but it certainly gave Grant all the material he needed for Wah-Wah, his semi-autobiographical debut as a writer and director.

The tiny African country Swaziland is on the verge of independence from the British. The expats, who until now have maintained a carefree lifestyle filled mostly with gin and adultery, are feeling panicked. Fourteen-year-old Ralph (played beautifully by Nicholas Hoult, that odd-looking kid from About a Boy) has more pressing domestic issues. Two years earlier his mother ran off with a neighbour and his father has turned to drink. Ralph returns from boarding school to find him remarried, to an American flight attendant he has known for six weeks. She gives the film its title, describing the snooty baby talk of the colonials (all ‘‘hoity-toity’’ and ‘‘toodle pip’’) as ‘‘a lot of old wah-wah’’.

Despite the brutality of Ralph’s family life, Wah-Wah is a sweet and at times very funny coming-of-age story. Grant takes some deserved pot shots at the snobby, hypocritical Brits, but his affection for Swaziland and the various characters from his youth is obvious. The cast includes Gabriel Byrne, Miranda Richardson and Julie Walters.

How very hubbly jubbly, as they say in the film.

EXTRAS: Richard E. Grant interview with Andrew Denton (not to be missed); interview for jtv; making-of doco