New Malaysian movie Autumn in Wales shows off the beauty of the rugged UK country
- The romantic comedy from director Rahila Ali unfolds against a backdrop of bucolic riversides, stone-walled cottages, colourful seaside houses and castle ruins
- The area featured has twice been used as a stand-in for Chinese locations: in a 2003 Tomb Raider movie and 1958 film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
From Sleepless in Seattle to Notting Hill, there is a long list of romantic comedies whose titles reference the locations in which they are set. The latest is Autumn in Wales, a Malaysian film.
The storyline follows pampered Aira (Eyka Farhana) as she travels to Wales to surprise her suave ex-fiancé, Darwish (Keith Foo), after he suddenly broke off their engagement.
On arriving, Aira finds Darwish smitten with the sophisticated Marissa (Wanna Ali). Aira subsequently teams up with the quirky Jaka (Jaa Suzuran), working in a cafe, to find out why Darwish dumped her, and seemingly falls in love with her new colleague in the process. The Filipino cafe owner, played by Amirul Haswendy, who also wrote the script, adds another comic twist.
In typical romantic-comedy style, “everything goes wrong”, as Suzuran puts it, but the plot unfolds against a backdrop of bucolic riversides, stone-walled cottages, colourful seaside houses and castle ruins.
“The idea of setting the film in Wales came from the director, Rahila Ali, who used to study in the UK and fell in love with certain parts of it, especially Wales,” says Haswendy, by email. “She likes to travel and the places that we shot in Wales were some of the places she’d been to.”
