Grand Tour Review

As the winner of the Best Director Award at Cannes, Grand Tour was easily one of my most anticipated films showing at the London Film Festival. Not only that but its premise and style made it seem like a fascinating film I was desperate to see more of. On top of that, the film was also selected as the Portuguese entry for Best International Feature Film at this year’s Academy Awards, which may suggest its importance and relevance in the few months as a player in the 2024 award season that we may not expect at first.

Set in 1918 in Ragoon, Grand Tour paints the picture of a city – and a country at large – under British colonial rule at the time. The film follows Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), a civil servant who abandons his fiancée Molly (Crista Alfaiate). After feeling on the day they are supposed to get married, Edward embarks on a tour of Asia and, more specifically, Burma. At the same time, Molly attempts to follow his trail every step of the way as she keeps sending his letters and telegrams in the hope that he will reply and eventually meet her.

The premise and idea of the film are fascinating: one thing is for sure, it will most certainly be unlike anything else you have seen this year. It is also impressive to have a film that is almost exclusively in black and white win such a prestigious award at one of the biggest film festivals in the world, given the general modern bias against black-and-white films. In this sense, the movie does an excellent job at proving how black and white footage can be an excellent choice in such a film and a valid artistic choice and filmmaking technique on the same level of using colour.

The setting is also especially interesting, especially for those of us in the audience who may have never visited the places Edward goes to on his tour. However, it also remains exclusively that: a setting that is ultimately not explored as much as I would have liked. While the film does a good job at showcasing the beauty of the country, its commentary on imperialism and orientalism, both key concepts of the early 20th century, are only suggested but never actually addressed or properly analysed in the movie. Instead, the film seems to get lost in its own convoluted idea of a present timeline in coloured footage that is never quite explained and left for the audience to guess the relevance of.

As the film goes on it becomes incredibly clear that, despite a good initial idea, it has very little to show for it. While impressive stylistically, the movie also feels too preoccupied with the artistry of it all rather than with telling a story in the first place. Perhaps too self-absorbed in its visuals and rather impressive directorial style, the film soon loses sight of its narrative and characters far too quickly. By the time the film ends, the audience knows next to nothing about the main characters as they remain as two-dimensional and obscure as they were when the film began.

Overall, Grand Tour is undoubtedly masterfully directed and shot, but everything else seems to be lacking in a film from which I expected a lot more. In the end, the film falls into the classic trap of style over substance that many other directors also end up suffering from. In of visuals and style, however, it remains an impressive achievement from Gomes in the way it perfectly portrays Asia under British rule in the early 1900s, despite its lack of a strong enough commentary on the matter from a narrative point of view.