Wah-Wah

The film is set in Swaziland at the end of the sixties, as the country approaches independence. Twelve-year-old Ralph is shaken when his mother leaves his father. His father is the director of education, is sinking into drink, and before long comes home with a new American wife. Over two years Ralph grows up inside that house: the closing world of colonial officials, the hypocrisy at the dinner tables, and what his father becomes at night. The title is the mocking name given to the language of the colonial community: meaningless, repeated, empty talk. It is Richard E. Grant's first film as director and comes directly from his own childhood; Grant grew up in Swaziland and lived through his parents' separation there. That is why the account neither accuses nor exonerates. Gabriel Byrne plays the father, Miranda Richardson the mother and Emily Watson the stepmother, with Nicholas Hoult as Ralph.