Grand Tour is one of the highest-profile films playing at IFFO this year thanks to the notable names involved. The Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes has been a mainstay on the festival circuit since his 2012 breakout hit, Tabu.
Gomes’ detached but firmly humanist gaze is bolstered here by the talents of the Thai arthouse cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, whose recent work on the 2024 Hollywood productions Trap and Challengers has made him one of the hottest cinematographers working today.
Tabu shares Grand Tour’s black-and-white look, its emotional detachment from primary characters and, most prominently, its dual structure in which the second half is comprised of flashbacks from the first. But while Tabu’s emotional detachment affords it a certain coldness, Grand Tour oozes warmth and beauty with every frame despite its stirring examination of the parallel decay of love and empire.
The film follows Edward, a British diplomat in occupied Myanmar in 1918, who suddenly abandons his fiancé, Molly, and attempts to evade her as she pursues him across Asia. In the first half we see Edward drifting from city to city and country to country; in the second, we see Molly turning up to these places after Edward has left.
Just as Edward’s relationship with Molly is in an odd state of limbo, he has the sense that the British Empire at large is in its waning days. Lost in life and in love, he sets to wandering from Myanmar to Vietnam to Japan to China, always departing once it seems Molly is at his heels.
This section of the film is a somewhat plotless but nevertheless engrossing travelogue. Once Edward has run away from home, he quickly recedes into the film’s periphery. In the forefront here are the worlds surrounding Edward – the bustling street-life, the packed, smoky bars, the tranquil routines of local farmers, all brought to life in Mukdeeprom’s breathtakingly vivid images.
The film takes extensive detours from Edward’s directionless journey, returning to him here and there as he receives inquisitive telegrams from Molly or intersects with the stories of servers, princes and fellow travellers. Just as Edward is himself an outsider to these communities, most of this section is comprised of the ordinary lives which, unexplained to the viewer, simply go on indifferent to the imperial authority stumbling through their towns.
In a crucial conversation with a Japanese community leader, in which Edward demonstrates a rare emotional lucidity, he is told to abandon himself to nature. When we last see Edward, it remains unclear if these words have brought him any peace – but the line may really be the key for the viewer. Edward’s aimless search for meaning reeks of exoticism, while the true capacity for transcendence already surrounds him in the beauty of jungles, mountain ranges and cities.
The sudden transition to Molly a little after the halfway point breathes new life into Grand Tour.
Compared to Edward, a somewhat featureless character that serves largely as a vehicle through which Gomes can explore these environments, Molly is practically exploding with personality and drive.
This section of the film is much more plot-heavy than the first, with Molly’s pursuit of Edward providing some forward momentum. She befriends several memorable characters along the way, including a sweet-hearted Vietnamese girl who accompanies her and a wealthy, flamboyant landowner who falls desperately in love with her.
It is here that the film’s overarching themes come into clearer focus. While Molly’s unshaking belief in her love with a man that is clearly fleeing her is at first funny and endearing, it slowly comes to belie a certain imperial arrogance. Feeling as if she owns the land and its people, Molly’s reckless pursuit comes to endanger her entourage.
This electric character, richly brought to life by Crista Alfaiate, helps to clarify the issues with the character of Edward. Rather than being enchanted by the world around him on the one hand, or madly trying to assert his fleeting power and influence on the other, he sits awkwardly in the middle of this spectrum – he is a relatively undefined, Monsieur Hulot-like character, drifting in and out of other people’s stories. While this does effectively frame the film as being about place rather than character, stronger characterization could have better supported the dual structure with Molly and more effectively driven home the theme of inevitable imperial decay.
Still, Grand Tour is an extremely effective formal exercise. Despite its fairly slow pace, it is stylistically bombastic – rapid editing replete with luscious fades and spotlights, sets overflowing with detail and decoration, reality-breaking moments in which characters burst into song.
Mukdeeprom’s cinematography at times recalls the naturalistic street photography of Chantal Akerman, so perfectly lifelike that one can practically smell the fumes of the rain, the greasy restaurant food, the sweat of the crowd, the fragrance of local flora. In other moments, the shots take on a surreal, almost mythological tone, with certain images feeling straight out of a dream: wealthy Europeans wandering confusedly around a crashed train car; a fishing boat bobbing in an all-white sea; a carriage silently traversing a foggy night.
Furthering this fable-like quality is the intermittent narration, spoken coldly in various Asian languages. This frames the narrative as something resembling local folklore – a simple story of two privileged outsiders chasing each other through cultures they cannot understand.
Not everyone will be on Grand Tour’s wavelength – in fact, several people left the ByTowne before its end. But those willing to abandon themselves to nature, to follow the quiet fable of Molly and Edward and to bask in the palpably atmospheric renderings of rural and urban Asia, will be rewarded. Although its slightness and leisurely pace might make muted first impressions, what is certain, loved or hated, is that Grand Tour will linger in the mind for some time.
Grand Tour played at the ByTowne Cinema on March 15. The International Film Festival of Ottawa (IFFO) continues until March 23 throughout Ottawa. Check out the film lineup here, and keep an eye out for future reviews from us!
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