Simply A Masterpiece

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Director Richard E. Grant brings his autobiographical story of growing up in Swaziland, Africa to the screen with vision and creativity. Sensitively observed and beautifully realized, this a very unique coming of age story. A fine cast does terrific work as the British colonialists who populate the landscape of Grant's imagination. Outstanding is Emily Watson as Ruby, a lovely American who marries Grant's characters father and seems to understand the little boy better than anyone. She is, to say the least, absolutely electric in the role and lights up every scene in which she appears. What a gifted and charismatic actor she is and this is one of her finest performances in a career where she has never done work that's less than superb. It is a delight to watch her cast her magic spell over this film and help Grant create one of the most superlative and uniquely inspired cinema coming of age stories every made.

WAH-WAH is a coming of age story about a teenage Briton in Swaziland just before independence. Most of the drama derives from the changing marital status of his father and from the impending retreat from Empire.Where this film is different is in its semi-autobiographical nature. Writer/Director Richard E. Grant based the story on his own childhood. The colonialists he depicts aren't the monsters of post-colonial films or the heroes of imperial ones. Instead Grant depicts the colonial bungalow culture of boredom, adultery, snobbery and alcohol. Like many real stories the facts get somewhat in the way of the fiction. The film is not especially satisfying as a coming of age drama nor as a depiction of the end of Empire. It is best thought of as a brief glimpse into a vanished culture. The narrative is weak, character arcs barely exist and the drama is repetitious (either bed-hopping, snobbery, alcoholism or related to a performance of the musical Camelot).Often the film is at its most interesting in suggesting the way things would change after the film ends. Miranda Richardson's American, with her anti-snobbery and pop-psychology suggests the cultural change of the 1960's and the Americanisation of England. The son's (illegal) trip to the cinema to watch A CLOCKWORK ORANGE concludes with him imitating the malicious smirk of Alex in the film. Like the audiences of the time, it is the smashing of social and moral values that attract him. He feels the power of violence, not the revulsion that Kubrick intended.WAH-WAH can't be accused of being especially interesting or good but with the benefit of Grant's first-hand knowledge it becomes an insight into a vanished era and a vanished people.

Such a pity this film is not being shown on general release but apparently only at "art" cinemas. It is one of the most moving films I have ever seen and will stay with me for many years to come. The entire audience in the theatre where I saw this film sat in stunned silence at the end. Seeing the movie was of particular interest to me because I lived for some years in the country in which the film was shot. Seeing the movie brought back so many memories for me - some of the 'extras' were people I knew during my time there. The story, based on Richard E Grant's childhood experiences in a tiny African Kingdom is brilliantly portrayed by a mixed cast of well known and unknown actors. Well done, REG, for telling your story so well!

This is the kind of movie I desperately hope for when I go to the cinema: A great story with great acting - everything else is window dressing. The British withdrawal from Swaziland forms a quite distant backdrop for this family melodrama. Absolute powerhouse performances from Gabriel Byrne (as an alcoholic divorcée) and Emily Watson (as an out of place American) join a watershed performance form the young Nicholas Hoult (from About a Boy), whose transformation from young boy to young man was one of the most compelling and convincing I have ever seen. The plot moves very rapidly through an endless cycle of unhappiness, family breakdown, drunkenness - and yet somehow, in the midst of this relentless pace, we feel for every character, and experience every emotion.This directorial debut goes so many places - staging a musical, many puppet shows, exploring the clash of three cultures, the ugly face of racism, a boy's coming of age - and yet the central narrative of a boy trying to find grounding in the midst of a tumultuous family life is brilliantly conceived, and always at the forefront. The auburn palette of the film is accentuated by over-exposed shots and intimate camera angles; this movie brings a small, insular circle of families to life, and while it makes no pretension to explore African culture (this itself is pointed, since the Brits were so racist), it explores the crisis of the modern family as well as cinema can possibly hope to.The tragic, show stopping revelation at the end concerning Byrne's character demands the whole movie be re-watched; it is an epiphany for Hoult, and it just may leave you thinking for a long time to come: What is the essence of a family? If love isn't enough, what is? There is a scene in the middle of the film where Hoult is transposed with Malclom McDowell's character from A Clockwork Orange. By the end of the movie I had my mind made up: Yes, Wah Wah can indeed stand proudly alongside the great films of cinema history, it's just that good.