Weekend films

'Grand Tour' and 'The Room Next Door', two cinematic experiences not to be missed

Two of the most interesting titles of recent months are arriving in cinemas: the latest film by Miguel Gomes, winner of Best Director at Cannes, and the new film by Pedro Almodóvar, Golden Lion at Venice

by Andrea Chimento

6 December 2024

3' min read

3' min read

The cinema of the big festivals is the star of the weekend in theatres: this week's new releases include 'Grand Tour' by Miguel Gomes, winner of the Best Director Award at the last Cannes Film Festival, and 'The Next Room' by Pedro Almodóvar, winner of the Golden Lion at this year's Venice Film Festival.

Starting with the Portuguese director's film, the 'Grand Tour' of the title refers to the journey two characters make: in 1917, in Burma, a British Empire official flees from his fiancée who has joined him on Asian soil to marry him. She, however, does not give up and follows his trail on a journey full of unexpected events.

It opens by showing a Ferris wheel, this film lacking a centre of gravity and built on a script that will deliberately lead us, the audience, to lose ourselves along with the characters on stage.

What the two protagonists of the film undertake is a journey within themselves, a mystical and spiritual 'grand tour', which combines historical-political insights into colonisation, while abandoning the classical space-time coordinates to immerse us in a profoundly symbolic scenario. There is ample room for melancholy and strongly emotional passages in this film characterised by a strong use of the narrator's voice and Gomes' desire to continue playing with narrative and experimentation, as he had already done in the beautiful 'Tabu' of 2012 and in that gigantic project of 2015 that answers to the title of 'The Thousand and One Nights - Arabian Nights', a work divided into three parts for a total duration of 382 minutes, which used the collection of short stories of the same name to reflect powerfully on various aspects of Portugal and the contemporary world.

“Grand Tour” e gli altri film della settimana
Photogallery4 foto

A mystical journey

If it is true that we viewers also feel as if we are travelling along with the characters, what we find before us - more than a film - is a mystical and fascinating audiovisual experience, which can be sublime or repulsive depending on whether one actually manages to enter into the poetics of a director who continues to raise the bar and whose talent never leaves one indifferent.

Remarkable is the formal care, enhanced by an elegant black and white (only at certain moments is the film in colour) that transports us into a film in which spatial and temporal coordinates are constantly lost.

What really counts in the images staged is the relationship between human beings and their environment, both beautiful and inhospitable, just like the whole of this film, which continuously plays with our emotions and gives us something truly unique to look at, feel and even smell: a product that manages to strike all our senses.

The room next door

Emotions are also not lacking in 'The Room Next Door', Pedro Almodóvar's English-language debut

Despite the production move, the Spanish director takes up many of the themes that have made his cinema recognisable in the past: the theme of female complicity, first and foremost, but also that of motherhood.

At the centre of the story are Ingrid and Martha, two long-time friends who meet again after many years in a decidedly dramatic circumstance: one of them, now ill for some time, has chosen to put an end to her suffering and asks the other to accompany her on this journey.

Not (only) a film about euthanasia, 'The Room Next Door' soon turns into an existential journey through past, present and... even the future.

With several references to 'The Dead - Dubliners', John Huston's magnificent 1987 film based on James Joyce's novel, Almodóvar signs a touching work, which grows at a distance after a somewhat cumbersome start and victim of too many flashbacks.

Beyond this introductory phase, the film has moments of great strength, as much in the writing as in the photographic choices, managing to reach particularly deep chords in the spectator's soul, thanks also to the powerful performances of the protagonists, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore.