Lust in the dust

WAH-WAH - Directed by Richard E Grant
Certificate 15

RICHARD E Grant has a long and illustrious career behind him.
And because he is an interesting actor, he believes we will be interested in his background. Thankfully, he has managed to make what could be seen as a luvvie’s misguided belief in his audiences’ interest in the development of his ego, into a wider study of the fall of Britain’s African empire.
It works as a cold-eyed look at the final days of British sub-Saharan colonial rule, and the peculiar strand of ex-pats it produced – a class of people Grant’s mother and father spring from.
In Wah-Wah, his directorial and writing debut, he shows he has a director’s eye for camera work and a story-teller’s ear.
The boredom of a pampered colonial life, coupled with the never admitted understanding that the end of empire is in sight, seems to have driven the main characters to distraction.
Firstly seen through the eyes of an 11-year-old, Grant takes us through the trials of his childhood. His mother left his father and this partly prompted a long and destructive relationship with alcohol.
But the problem with this cinematic autobiography is that Grant has obviously gone some lengths to exorcise his own demons, and does not want to water down the awfulness of his experience. But this means Wah-Wah makes for some bleak viewing.
Our hero is Ralph Compton. His mother Laura Compton (Miranda Richardson) is unfaithful to her husband Harry, and her distasteful behaviour (which includes getting in a sexual tangle with her husband’s friend in front of her son) does not impress poor young Ralph.
Harry (Gabriel Byrne) is in a good position to show how the decline of empire affected those whose personal careers were bound up in it, however, unlike George Orwell, who found his role as a policeman in Burma had made him a staunch opponent of colonial rule, the end of British control of Swaziland means the end of Harry’s usefulness.
Harry has a temper on him, but Grant has managed to make the audience find pity for the situation he finds himself in.
Ralph is packed off to boarding school and when he returns he discovers his father has married Ruby (Emily Watson), an American who has come to inject some life into the post-colonial malaise the Swaziland-Brits are suffering from.
Grant does not have much time for the colonial triumvirate that was needed to run an empire – the civil servants, the businessmen and the military are pictured as a race of uniquely dislikeable people. It is done with enough humour and poise to make a cast of characters it is hard to feel sorry for watchable.