Narrative and documentary interweave to deliver a tale of folly, and misguided love in Miguel Gomes’s latest film Grand Tour.
Set in the year 1917, a civil servant for the British Empire named Edward decides to escape his fiance Molly, taking a ‘Grand Tour’ of Asia in an absurd act of avoidance. Undeterred Molly decides to pursue him, closely following his trail.
Filmed in a black and white old Hollywood style Grand Tour presents a world that feels much like its protagonist, slightly detached and artificial. These studio bound scenes are beautiful, carrying a filmic haze, they also feel somewhat claustrophobic almost like there are walls at the edge of frame. To contrast these scenes, Gomes supplements large sections of the story with documentary scenes shot on location in modern day Asia.
The contemporary nature of these scenes are embraced, with vignettes of everyday things from our time; a drunk man slurs ‘My Way’ into a karaoke machine, scooters weave between lanes of a busy road barley escaping collision, a monorail follows its track through a building. This mixing of the past and present creates an engaging tonal meditation exploring notions of place and time in a constructed world and an Asia as it is today.
This device also serves as an ingenious way to keep the setting of the journey grand without needing to create period accurate locations. Keeping a connection to the story the narrator drives these sequences continuing where the period scenes left off. This results in a 100 year time difference between picture and sound which only acts to enhance the world of the story giving it a sense of texture and realism.
Grand Tour is sure to delight fans of world cinema, it is a film that works best in a cinema away from the distractions of our time.
Review by Flynn Boffo
Catch ‘Grand Tour’ in cinemas now. For cinemas and session times see the website below.
https://potentialfilms.com/contemporary-movies/grand-tour/
