On the road in Southeast Asia: Gonçalo Waddington as Edward. Photo / Supplied
On the road in Southeast Asia: Gonçalo Waddington as Edward. Photo / Supplied
Grand Tour, directed by Miguel Gomes, is out now.
Rating out of five: ★★★½
Last year’s Cannes film festival awarded Portuguese film-maker Miguel Gomes best director prize for his strange, mystical, multi-lingual, period-drama-cum-documentary.
While Grand Tour’s story, acting and script may not meet our expected notions of award-winning cinema,it’s easy to see why Gomes’ (Arabian Nights, Tabu) creativity and innovation was lauded.
Shot on old-fashioned 16mm film, he mixes a black and white fictional story with full-colour doco footage, presenting a cast of eccentric Portuguese-speaking “British” characters who lead the viewer on a tour of early 20th-century Southeast Asia.
Told in two distinct parts, the 1908 tale first follows English civil servant Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) as he ditches his seven-year engagement and flees across Asia in a fit of self-obsessed melancholy. Edward traverses Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand, spends time in Vietnam,then China and Japan, only vaguely cognisant that his plucky fiancée Molly (Crista Alfaiate) won’t take “go back home” for an answer. His road trip brings him into contact with various strangers whose wisdom may help him make sense of his life.
In part two, Molly follows in Edward’s footsteps but her story takes an unexpected turn.
Initially it feels like a strange decision to have European actors play British people, who visit the Long Bar at Singapore’s famous Raffles Hotel, where the staff are inexplicably speaking Portuguese. But as Edward moves from beautifully photographed place to place, the voice-over narration also switches to the scene’s local language, and you soon get swept up in the beguiling nature of yesteryear international exploration.
The hotch-potch of linguistic choices also feels completely in-step with a soundtrack that mixes Strauss waltzes, lazy jazz and the Eton boating song (used over contemporary footage of a bustling Bangkok river). The slow-moving camera and lack of pacy action contribute to Grand Tour’s slightly soporific effect.
This all amounts to a film not so much to watch as to surrender to. Grand Tour may feel wholly esoteric to the average arthouse viewer, let alone a mainstream audience – but those in the headspace for a Fellini-esque trip that is enchanting more than traditionally engaging will be in for a treat.
