by Finnlay Dall
Worth: $11.80
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Gonçalo Waddington, Crista Alfaiate, Lang Khê Tran
Intro:
... a feat of technical wizardry.
The year is 1918, diplomat and reluctant groom-to-be Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) heads to Singapore in a bid to escape his fiancé Molly (Crista Alfaiate). Disaster soon strikes however, as while en route his train car derails, leaving himself and those onboard stranded in the jungle.
Edward is unperturbed by the whole affair. Sketching wildlife and breathing in the morning air, he sees his detour as a good omen. Deciding to continue his journey on foot, the young man is determined to see all that Asia has to offer.
With Molly not too far behind him, his reprieve from married life may soon come to an end.
Portuguese director Miguel Gomes (Arabian Nights, Tabu) conjures a sound stage straight out of the 1930s. Complete with incandescent floodlights, sculpted foliage and dense artificial fog, his recreation of an old-school “talkie” is a feat of technical wizardry. Following in the footsteps of filmmakers like Anna Biller and her 2016 film, The Love Witch, Gomes uses his aesthetic as more than just blatant nostalgia bait. Although it is lovingly indulgent at times, the style reveals a vapid veneer – the type that studios of the era often used to romanticise an ugly truth.
Edward’s story is rather uninteresting. Besides the tiny snippets here and there, a majority of his story is told in voice-over. Exhaustive, dead-pan and spoken in the native language of whatever country he happens to be in, it’s made clear that his journey is not the heart of the film.
Instead, we’re thrust into modern day Asia, including vibrant puppet performances in Myanmar or a Filipino man pouring his soul out to a karaoke song.
Presented (mostly) in coloured film stock, these guerrilla moments are intended to wash away the gloss of Hollywood. Edward’s story – the one seen through the eyes of the Orientalist – is a warped vision of Asian “culture”, and one that should ultimately take a back seat.
The whiplash between modern and old-school filmmaking is strikingly effective. Edward will speak with the child prince of Thailand, only for the film to cut away to motorcyclists, their waltz at a Thai intersection underscored by The Blue Danube.
In Japan, the audience is greeted with tired salary men at a Ramen shop before being thrust back to Edward, as he offensively dons the robes of a Buddhist monk, and is drawn by horse cart to the temple.
Gomes intentionally gives Edward’s story the same treatment Hollywood has given Asian characters for nearly a century. You only have to take a look at Waddington to be reminded of Raymond Burr’s leading role in the infamous re-release of Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), in which scenes were edited around Burr and his “translator” Iwanaga to make a white man the main protagonist.
Heavily inspired by Chris Marker’s 1983 documentary, Sans Soleil, the real characters of Grand Tour are the people of Asia. Whether it’s the citizens of Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan or China, their lives are at the forefront of the film. Being unaltered by the gloss and glamour of a soundstage, these everyday people are a delight to watch. By contrast, the audience should see Edward’s unromantic odyssey, as a distorted mirror of past values, something to be judged and detested; despite its polish.
It’s a valiant effort that is somewhat soured at the midpoint, when we are introduced to Molly. Her story, while counter to Edward’s, repeats many of the same stops. And while the addition of an insistent suitor and Vietnamese companion in housemaid Ngoc (Lang Khê Tran) are nice additions, they feel unnecessary. Especially given Molly’s story lacks a lot of the same anachronistic filmmaking that made Edward’s part significant. Arguably, Molly is the other side of a fictional story that, whether intentional or not, was already struggling to reach the hour mark.
Grand Tour is a technical achievement on aesthetics alone, and Gomes’ shunning of Orientalism, instead favouring a more “generous” view of culture, is when the film is at its most engaging. But unlike Sans Soleil, whose narrative falls away to serve its greater ideas, Gomes’ seems intent on finishing his Hollywood “romance”, even if the audience starts getting cold feet.