Potential Films presents Grand Tour, a film by Miguel Gomes.
Starring Gonçalo Waddington, Crista Alfaiate, Cláudio da Silva & Lang Khê Tran
From its opening moments, Grand Tour immerses viewers in evocative imagery—a ferris wheel turns as a train winds its way toward the capital of Burma, setting the tone for a film rich in both visual splendor and poetic storytelling. The scene transitions seamlessly into a performance of traditional Burmese puppetry, their exquisite movements accompanied by rhythmic drumming, drawing the audience into a world both real and dreamlike.
Set in 1918, Grand Tour follows Edward Abbott, a man who abandons his fiancée, Molly, on the day of her long-awaited arrival. After seven years apart, Edward, rather than meeting her ship from London, instead boards a vessel bound for Singapore. His journey becomes an odyssey through Asia—crossing precarious landscapes, bustling cities, and dreamlike fever states. In Singapore, he visits Molly’s cousin, Reginald Singleton, before departing again, this time for Thailand. Along the way, he finds himself waking on a derailed train, encountering shadow puppetry performances, and navigating villages with a hired guide.
Miguel Gomes crafts a travelogue that is both historical and hallucinatory. Overlays of sound and image blur past and present, creating a fever dream of colonial-era Southeast Asia. The film’s soundscape is particularly striking—little music accompanies the journey, allowing the ambient noises of each locale to become the film’s true score. The crackling of a fire, a whisper of breath, the distant hum of life in motion—all contribute to the immersive experience.
Edward’s flight leads him to Mandalay, then across the Gulf to Saigon, where he becomes a stowaway on a fishing boat. As his travels continue, he grows increasingly ill, his world unraveling. A telegram arrives: Already in Saigon. The mystery behind his reason for being on the move deepens. He shifts into a nocturnal existence—gambling, fighting with sailors, nursing hangovers. Anticipation builds as the true purpose of his travels becomes ever more ambiguous. Is he running away from something or toward it?
Cleverly, narration shifts between languages throughout the film, grounding the viewer in each locale. In Osaka, Edward confides in a local named Keita at a temple, haunted by shadows that seem not to obscure, but to reveal. These shadows, glimpses of unseen lives, hint at the film’s central meditation on perspective—how our actions can be perceived in entirely different ways depending on who is watching.
The dual perspectives of Grand Tour elevate it beyond a mere travel diary. Molly’s relentless pursuit of Edward mirrors his aimless escape, but her journey is one of rigid fixation, a refusal to deviate from a predetermined path. Where Edward seems intoxicated by avoidance, she is equally consumed by the idea of commitment—ironic, given that their pursuits are, in their own ways, acts of devotion.
Visually breathtaking and narratively hypnotic, Grand Tour is both a reflection in a river and a journey through landscapes of love, regret, and the unknown. It is a stunning meditation on travel and self-discovery, where the act of running away may be the deepest form of commitment. Gomes delivers a moving, dreamlike odyssey that lingers long after the credits roll.
Grand Tour is now showing at Palace Nova Cinema in Adelaide:
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