Ever since his second feature, Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto, was presented at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, astonishing audiences with its singular and playful meta-ethnographic approach, Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes has continuously captivated cinephiles worldwide with his bold, imaginative storytelling and unique cinematic voice. His unique blend of fiction and documentary, which is often infused with a humanistic perspective and has a light comedic touch alongside socio-political perspectives, has earned him a devoted following and made him a standout figure in contemporary auteur cinema. The recent excitement surrounding his latest work, Grand Tour, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival – that turned him into the first Lusitanian filmmaker to win the Best Director award in the entire history of the festival – is yet another testament to his ever-growing allure.

Throughout his career, Gomes has consistently defied conventional narrative structures, crafting films that are as playful as they are deeply profound. From the evocative contemporary take on classical cinema in Tabu (2012) to his ambitious magnum opus, the As Mil e Uma Noites (2015) trilogy, a hybrid take on the classical Persian tale that serves as a pivot to portray the Portuguese economic crisis, his films delve into themes of memory, history, and the human experience, often with a subtle nod to Portugal’s colonial past, always in relation with diverse cinematographic devices and meditations around fiction and narrative. 

Grand Tour, his most recent project, is a visually poetic, whimsical film that intertwines fantasy and reality through the journey of Edward, who escapes his engagement by traveling across Asia, and Molly, his determined fiancée who follows him. Utilizing a mix of black-and-white and color, Gomes alternates between different styles, from documentary footage to set pieces which evoke a charming, dreamlike world, pushing again the boundaries of creativity and cinematic expression, while offering audiences a visually stunning and emotionally resonant journey that reaffirms his status as one of the most inventive voices in global cinema. 

*

PE: Grand Tour is perhaps your most “dialectical” film. There’s this contrast – a topic we have talked about before – between studio images and those that are filmed with a documentary-like approach; contemporary images and fiction set at the beginning of the 20th century; comedy and melodrama; the stories of these two characters that alter each other’s tone, both of them belonging to a Western universe. I imagine you as a scientist in a laboratory mixing chemicals, experimenting with the juxtaposition of elements that I don’t think are necessarily in collision but rather intertwined. 

MG: In fact, we’re doing both things simultaneously. The first edit was done while writing the script. The second one was done at the end, but also involved some writing because we were working on the voiceover at the same time. The antagonistic elements are colliding throughout the film while creating an artificial continuity. Some viewers feel the collisions more, others go with the flow. These antagonistic elements are also complementary.

PE: How necessary and deliberate are those collisions for you? Are they essential in your work?

MG: The collisions between different materials produce the cinematic quality of the film. Screenwriters talk about narrative conflict as an essential aspect of making a film, but I think that’s not the point. It’s a broader kind of clash that goes beyond narrative conflict. Just like batteries: to have cinema, you must have a negative and a positive pole, an opposition of energies, to generate a charge.

PE: Few filmographies come to mind that have been as “influenced” by the COVID pandemic as yours – The Tsugua Diaries is a chronicle of the lockdown, and the production of Grand Tour was heavily affected by it, to the point that it became a mechanism of creation. I think of Radu Jude, who literally turned the situation into context, and many other, albeit far less interesting films. In your case, you’re someone who enjoys challenges and stimuli. You subject fiction (your fiction, your creativity) to various challenges and let it be enhanced under specific conditions… In this case, it wasn’t so deliberate. Can you tell me more about the making of this film?

MG: We decided to start shooting the Asian trip before writing the script. So the script wouldn’t come solely from our imagination but as a result — let’s say, a reaction — to our traveling (and the images we shot) in Southeast Asia. It’s not supposed to be like this in cinema, so we had to be “creative” in dealing with the very strict rules of funding. But between risking being caught and punished for breaking the rules of the funding institutes, and trying to create an organic process to make a film like this one, we didn’t hesitate. I believe that making a film means to start a chain of reactions. So, in the end, I’m not very surprised about how things ended up, because, from the very start, I didn’t have a predefined image of what the film would be. I just followed the road, knowing that in the end, I would end up somewhere.

PE: I believe that’s what cinema should be, for both creators and spectators. Do you consider this to be the spirit of your work? 

MG: I think a film of mine should be the result of a process, not an idea. I don’t think this is the natural law of cinema for everyone. For me, it is.

PE: I guess you are not alone in this because it’s kind of crazy how someone, like your producer for example, accepts getting involved in a creative process like this, don’t you think?

MG: My producer, Filipa Reis, is also a director. Maybe that helps in understanding that to start filming the trip with no script would yield a different result than just following the conventional path. But it was also a producer’s move. Nowadays, people play it safer, but traditionally, the producer was the big gambler in cinema. In this case, Filipa thought she would have to risk some money from the start, but in the end, she knew she would get it all back.

PE: I’m really curious how this trip influenced the ideas you had before traveling and vice-versa. When did the idea of making a film come to your mind? At the same time, you were planning to shoot another film in Brazil, as if you needed new scenarios and to discover new places.

MG: From the very start, I wanted to travel through a vast territory, far from Europe, and at the same time recreate these spaces in the way they were designed and conceived in classical cinema. And to cut from one thing to the other throughout the film.

We did some weeks of research before the trip to decide which places and situations we would like to film. Then we would be confronted every day of the trip/shooting with whatever we had to shoot. And we reacted to it by shooting it. Every day was different. If you ask me if the other screenwriters and I were developing a clearer view of the film or even of Asia itself during the script, the answer is no. Every day was different, like the footage we were shooting.

Grand Tour appeared at a moment when the Brazilian film was in limbo. We never got to start the production on that one. After it landed at Cannes, we have better prospects to get back to Brazil and do it for real. I hope it will be my next film.

PE: I understand the shooting got interrupted by the pandemic, did you direct scenes remotely?

MG: The Chinese footage was shot remotely. I had a one hundred percent Chinese crew, and I was directing it while in Lisbon. I couldn’t enter China to finish our trip and shoot that footage. I waited for two years, and in the end, I came up with the idea of remote shooting. It worked out surprisingly well. I could whisper into the ear of the DP what to do during each shot because I was receiving a live feed.

PE: By the live feed you were getting from China you mean that they were sending you the images live? Because that material, as far as I remember, is on film… so, in a way, you blindly trusted the DOP and followed only his descriptions? 

MG: I was receiving a live feed from the phone of the assistant director to have a notion of the whole environment. And also from the film camera. It was my job to place the camera and choose the lenses. And to shout action, to ask for pans during the shot, and to cut at the end of a shot. Just like if I was there. That was surprising because I thought I would be more limited. 

PE: On the other hand you have a completely different way of working on the studio scenes. How comfortable did you feel in those, considering that it’s something which, in its way, is new for you?

MG: I initially felt worried because I don’t like having everything under control. But I discovered that I could do the same in the studio. We still didn’t have a storyboard or predetermined shooting methods in the studio. But it was fine.

PE: Film history is always present in your work. I believe Grand Tour has the stamp of Chris Marker’s presence, but also of screwball comedy… Many of the films that I saw at Cannes felt as if they acted like the history of cinema didn’t exist. I’d like to know your stance on this necessity for that presence and if you have any position on a certain way of understanding – or not – contemporary cinema as film had been born in 2010.

MG: I would say that not knowing anything or very little about the films of the 20th century isn’t good. There’s too much beauty in some of them to consider that it’s best for someone making a film to be free from all that. So the main issue wouldn’t be the question of knowing or not knowing these films, but what you can do with this memory. If you can integrate it in a productive way or if it’s a prison. During Grand Tour, I thought a little bit about screwball comedies. I think Molly’s silly laugh comes from there, not from a specific film, but from the spirit of these kinds of films. I didn’t think about Marker, although now I see the parallel clearly. I would maybe add Johan van der Keuken. For instance, Amsterdam Global Village. And shooting in a studio with “Asian sets”, it’s difficult to avoid the memory of Josef von Sternberg, of course.

PE: Were these films in your mind during the writing part or the shooting?

MG: Van der Keuken and Marker only during the editing. Sternberg mostly when I was discussing the work in the studio with the DOP, the art directors, and all the set construction crew.

PE: Now that we talk about a cinema that’s related to a tradition, do you feel that you need to defend “a (type of) cinema”?

MG: I think that the art form closest to cinema isn’t literature, photography, or painting. It’s architecture. A film, for me, is a space that will be inhabited by someone I do not know. My job is to organize it and try to ensure this person isn’t completely lost inside my film but at the same time can profit from a certain freedom and not be imprisoned by the film. The same ideas are also valid for the characters of the film. And this film/building shouldn’t exist like a bubble, it should let some air enter (from memories of other films to knowledge of the world itself). I am completely ignorant about architecture. But every time I discuss with architects about mine or their work, I feel we really share many concerns and priorities.

PE: When you received the Best Director award a few months ago at Cannes, you honored the Portuguese filmmakers who preceded you and emphasized the lack of recognition that such a prolific and important filmography has in A-Class festivals. I was surprised by the fact that no one from Portugal had won this award before. But I wasn’t surprised at all that you pointed it out. 

MG: I have a feeling of belonging to something larger than my work, and that is Portuguese cinema. From the 1960s on, I think Portuguese cinema has an interesting history with a strong identity, where I can feel at home. This feeling of being part of Portuguese cinema is part of my identity more than just being a Portuguese citizen (and I am not complaining about being Portuguese). 

PE: Portuguese filmmakers seem very aware of the importance of the history of their filmography and their country. I say this as a Mexican, where such awareness (especially regarding colonialism) is scarce. I’d like to ask you about that awareness concerning the ideas about colonization that can come from a narrative like the one proposed in Grand Tour.

MG: Colonialism, I think, isn’t the main issue of Grand Tour, like it was in Tabu. For starters, I was dealing with characters coming from the British colonial empire. As a Portuguese, the “others” for me were not only the Asians but also the British. But even if I think the colonial issue is not the center of this film, of course, it is present in several ways. The permanent instability in the film, constantly shifting between a “fake” 1918 in the studio and a “real” present-day Southeast Asia, is one of these ways of bringing the colonial issue into the film. Perhaps, the shift between the present and past as a way of dealing with the colonial is the most interesting one.

Pedro Emilio Segura Bernal

Selecționer, critic și distribuitor de film din Mexic. Este co-fondator și co-director al La Ola Cine, o companie de distribuție de film din Mexico City. În prezent, face parte din echipele artistice ale festivalurilor Black Canvas, Reykjavik FF, Ambulante și Woche der Kritik. Textele sale despre cinema au fost publicate în reviste precum Cinema Scope, Film Comment, MUBI Notebook, cât și în proiectele editoriale ale festivalurilor de la Locarno, Viennale, Mar del Plata și altele.