It’s good that Tim Key is so “charming”, as his comedy and writing partner Tom Basden put it, because if his character in “Ballad on Wallis Island“Be more annoying, he can threaten to track the whole thing.
“He is definitely the most dangerous in the sense that he can destroy filmKey said in IndieWire Studio 2025 on SundancePresented by Dropbox. “Basically, it is to get to the point where you totally think this guy is in a living nightmare because he’s in this guy pocket, but not spinning out in the audience to be, I can’t tolerate watching on this guy. ”
“The Ballad of Wallis Island” stars Basden and important returning characters that they initiated at the beginning of their career with a short film in 2007. In short, a fading folk rock musician named Herb McGwire takes a private gig on a remote island for a man who has won the lottery . What McGwire does not know is that his host is an audience of one, and that he is the most annoying super fan.
The film expands that condition by introducing Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan), the second half of the 2000s Indie Folkduo McGwyer Mortimer and McGwyer’s previous love interest. Mortimer arrives to reunite with McGwyer that he is not wiser and revives an old relationship.
As Indieview noted in our Review of SundanceThe movie is warm, sweet and fun in the way many John Carney movies are. But in this case, director James Griffiths needed to beat a specific tone to make sure the audience did not get tired of him as much as McGwyer does.
“It’s to make sure we get the balance right that his character is bearable,” Griffiths said. “There is a nice line where you just don’t want the audience to get annoyed by it, but you want herb to get annoyed by it. It was a tonnage thing. There is very good material, but we just wanted to keep it (focused) . ”
Part of that challenge came with simply editing the endless improvisation between Basden and Key that would have done for their own fantastic film.
“I loved the dynamics, just being on the set and watching these guys and being the straight man and watching these guys. The four -hour movie that is not there are only these guys who rice. That’s the best, ”Mulligan said. “At the end of each scene they would just continue, and then griff after a while would go,“ Okay, that’s enough. ”
“Not even” cut “, only I can’t carry this anymore,” the key chimped in.
“The Ballad of Wallis Island” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Focus features release it theatrical on March 28.
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