Grand Tour

The sixth feature film by Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes, Grand Tour plays out like a companion piece to his 2012 masterpiece Tabu, with some striking similarities to his 2008 sophomore film Our Beloved Month of August. This implies that Grand Tour employs 16mm film stock, seamlessly fusing fact and fiction, artifice and realism, and stylized formalism with documentarian sensibilities. It’s certainly niche art-house filmmaking, and it’s an enchanting meditation on colonialism, detached love, and just how much Western civilization has attempted to co-opt Asia over the years with colonialism, modernization, and capitalism.

Grand Tour bounces between modern documentary footage of Burma (now known as Myanmar), where we see the modernization of traffic jams, vehicles, and carnivals that still hold the traditions of older times as well. For the narrative, Gomes magnificently utilizes Kodak Film Stock and juxtaposes it with documentary color footage with some voice-over narration that is both playful and insightful. Like Tabu, there are so many ravishing shots that you want to linger, but you are crushed once the footage cuts away seamlessly to the next ravishing image.

Courtesy Mubi

The narrative, which just might have only about 65 minutes of footage, starts off with Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), who flees from his fiancée Molly (Crista Alfaiate) as he begins to get cold feet. He ends up traveling throughout Asia, only for Molly to cheekily attempt to track him down as he embarks on his spontaneous travelogue. The romance adds some slapstick humor with melancholy. Edward finds himself deep in the jungles of Asia after a train derailment, and we see striking images of panda bears relaxing on bamboo trees and a mountain carved with Buddha. There is something more playful this time around to highlight the absurdity of colonialism as well.

Bu contrast, Grand Tour certainly plays out like a companion piece to Tabu, which both films explore a doomed romance in a era of colonialism. Where Tabu highlighted colonialism has something more structured, schematic, yet self-destructive, Gomes explores a side of aloofness and obliviousness this time around. Edward’s encounters show a cowardice and Edward gains wisdom from some of the natives that inform them that even though they may spread their influences, they will never fully comprehend the land that they occupy. The film has an aura of fools fleeting in time to surroundings that they certainly take for granted. While Molly brings an optimism to her journey with her cutesy laugh that she uses as a response mechanism each time she deals with something that brings a discomfort. Eventually, the laugh becomes more defiant, and her journey ends up finding its demise to draw out parallels how modern colonization died out the quickest in Asia.

With experimental aesthetics and spontaneous film structure, Gomes utilizes his landscapes and aching time to build up a catharsis about the passage of time and culture. When the film ends, the artifice of the film overtakes everything. In a beautiful shot of Molly, we watch Molly fade with a film light, daring us to consider everything we have been watching is a movie this whole time with all the era-spanning and globetrotting. Yet, reminding us that this is a film and everything from the past will be mediated through cinema. There is quite a melancholy to that.

GRAND TOUR is now playing in limited theaters and streaming on MUBI