It is, according to no less an authority than the romcom king Richard Curtis, destined to be “one of the greatest British films of all time”. But don’t let that put you off. For The Ballad of Wallis Island – the unlikely new tale of a socially awkward millionaire who inveigles two estranged former halves of a folk-singing duo into playing a private gig on his windswept private island – isn’t some floppy-haired Hugh Grant vehicle, but a reflection on our national character that is altogether more of its times.

It’s a lovely, melancholic comedy about the acceptance of failure, loss and the slow understanding that what’s gone is not coming back: an ode to rain and cardigans, lousy plumbing and worse puns, shot in Wales on a shoestring budget in a summer so unforgiving that a doctor was apparently required on set to check for hypothermia. Its main characters have not only all messed up at something – relationships, careers, managing money – but seem fairly capable of messing up again in future. Yet as a film it’s both gloriously funny and oddly comforting, taking a world where everything seems to be slowly coming adrift and making that feel so much more bearable.

There’s no such thing as a national character really, of course; or at least no set of indisputably British traits on which 68 million people could ever all agree. Yet there’s a clear pattern........

© The Guardian