Cannes Film Festival

'Grand Tour', a fascinating cinematic experience

The Portuguese director's new film was presented in competition. Also in the running for the Palme d'Or is the Brazilian 'Motel Destino'.

23 May 2024

3' min read

Miguel Gomes continues to play with cinematic language in 'Grand Tour', one of the most intriguing films seen so far in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Always a great experimenter, the Portuguese filmmaker had captivated in 2012 with 'Tabu', before giving life in 2015 to that gigantic project 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.

Filmed in black and white, with some sequences in colour, 'Grand Tour' begins in 1917 Burma. Edward, an official of the British Empire, flees from his fiancée Molly on the day she arrives for their wedding. During the journey, however, panic gives way to melancholy: contemplating the emptiness of his existence, Edward wonders what has become of Molly. Meanwhile, the girl, determined to marry and strangely amused by her fiancé's escape, follows his trail on this Asian grand tour.

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 viewers, to lose ourselves along with the characters on stage.

Through a strong use of the narrator's voice, Gomes shows his focus on storytelling, mixing different dramaturgical forms and creating a kind of summation of all the obsessions present in his previous works.

A mystical and political journey

What the characters in the film undertake is a journey within themselves, a mystical and spiritual 'grand tour', combining historical and political insights into colonisation, but abandoning the classical space-time coordinates to immerse us in a deeply symbolic scenario.

In this complicated, fascinating and repelling feature film, the strength of the images is truly remarkable, thanks to a formal care that succeeds in perfectly rendering the relationship between human beings and the wild environment that surrounds them.

Miguel Gomes thus raises the bar of his cinema even higher with a film that offers a simply unique viewing experience, capable of confirming the talent of an author who never leaves you indifferent.

Motel Destiny

Also in the running for the Palme d'Or is 'Motel Destiny', the new film by Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz.

After the disappointing 'Firebrand', a feature-length costume film not very much in his style that was presented last year also on the Croisette, Aïnouz returns to his homeland to tell a story undoubtedly closer to his poetics.

The motel of the title is run by a couple whose existence will be totally disrupted by the arrival of Heraldo, a runaway boy who starts working inside the building.

Aïnouz succeeds well in rendering the decadent, not to say decaying, atmosphere of the place at the centre of this film, a building lit by neon lights in which every form of humanity seems to have vanished.

The packaging is certainly consistent with what is being told, but the screenplay follows over-trodden paths and fails to surprise as it would like to and should: the frame, thus, is worth more than the picture in this film, which ends up going too far in circles.

The emotions that the Brazilian director had given us with the beautiful 'The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão' in 2019 are, unfortunately, also far removed from this latest product, which is only able to involve us for a few stretches. It is a pity because Aïnouz has talent, but he has been showing very little of it lately.