One of the images opening Grand Tour, the sixth feature by Portuguese master Miguel Gomes, is that of an Asian puppet theatre where two figures (one male, the other female) dance shoulder to shoulder but never touch – such a modest, yet concise and all-encompassing statement of what we are about to witness over the next two hours, both in terms of narrative and storytelling. A film whose beauty is hard to put into words – and I feel that whatever I write here won’t do it justice; perhaps, these words spoken by a Japanese monk at one point might describe it best: “Abandon yourself to the world; you will see how generous it is.”

The film revolves around a game of cat and mouse – whose topographical and emotional proportions become increasingly dizzying as its two players (anchored in events happening on both sides of this chase) unfold over the same period of time. In the first half, we follow Edward (Goncalo Waddington), a British clerk in Burma who gets cold feet upon learning that his fiancée is coming from London to marry him and flees across thousands of miles to evade her. In the second half, we follow Molly’s (Crista Alafaite) side of the story, who trails Edward with a mixture of mad determination, tenacity, and amusement.

The journey takes them from Yangon to Singapore, then to Bangkok, Saigon, Osaka, Shanghai, and Chengdu – their adventures in each country are narrated by locals speaking in their own language, creating a sound and linguistic landscape that hands over the narrative reins. A narrative that also delves into British colonialism in East Asia – particularly those who suffered from it, thus avoiding the trap of Orientalism. (See the superb discussion between Edward and another British official, who points out, between puffs of an opium pipe, that “the end of the empire is inevitable. White man is completely unable to understand the Orient. It transcends him.”) The betrotheds’ separate endeavours are depicted through the film’s tandem of images: alternating between meticulous recreations of the immediate post-World War I years and present-day images of the countries Edward and Molly pass through on their grand tour.

In this sense, the film is almost like a twin to Tabu, the film with which Gomes established himself as one of the most important filmmakers of our era: not so much because it explores the other geographical side of European colonialism, or because it employs an extradiegetic narrative instance or an atypical way of representing the past through the means of the present (in the case of Tabu, through Aurora’s somewhat-hallucinated memories), but more in the fact that its bipartite structure has countless complex ramifications on what cinema can mean (and be).

What distinguishes Grand Tour in a year with so much pointless ballast – so many films polished to the point of platitude, so visibly planned, hence lifeless and demonstrative – is this perfect balance between the rigour of form, on the one hand, and its freedom, on the other: a fact largely due to the way it was made. Namely, in two parts. The first, a weeks-long scouting trip just before the pandemic, stretched across several East Asian countries, where documentary footage of daily life (focusing mainly on work – but also including atmospheric shots and various traditions and rituals) was shot on 16mm. The second, comprising all the fictional scenes, which were shot on set at the end of the pandemic. (A piece of information that enriches not only this film but also Gomes’s previous effort, The Tsugua Diaries, a candid, lively, and reflective portrait of the summer of 2020.)

Much more than a fortuitous choice (by the great circumstances of the world, but also by budget constraints) or even a self-reflexive gesture, it is rather a meta-cinematic one: rarely does a hybrid film whose parts seem, at first glance, so different, manage to blend them with such naturalness, as if they had natural and reciprocal extensions – both questioning what constitutes a historical film (thus refusing to re-constitute in order to re-present) and at the same time offering an impeccable answer to it. In what other film do the images of men walking, as in a balancing act, on wires tied to a voltage pole while changing them or of a dog sprawled on the floor on a warm spring afternoon coexist so naturally with the images of a glance exchanged between the jealous wives of a carrier and the traveller he guides; or those of elegant passengers in two palanquins meeting by chance in the depths of the forest?

A film whose beauty is hard to put into words – and I feel that whatever I write here won’t do it justice; perhaps, these words spoken by a Japanese monk at one point might describe it best: “Abandon yourself to the world; you will see how generous it is.”

Perhaps the most beautiful scene in Grand Tour is that of the Lunar New Year: where, imperceptibly, to the tune of Johann Strauss II’s Blue Danube, the images simply blend on the screen, suddenly rolling into an overwhelming kaleidoscope. What is this if not a film about what it means to be a witness to the world – as much as you are a part of it? Although, sadly, it’s quite unlikely the film will be rewarded accordingly by the jury – this is certainly the masterpiece of this year’s Cannes edition.

“Grand Tour” had its world premiere in the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Flavia Dima

Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.