CANNES 2024 - remote notes

[Chris Knipp]

CRISTA ALFAIATE IN GRAND TOUR

GRAND TOUR (Miguel Gomes)

TEASER TRAILER

In Competition. GRAND TOUR, another "beguiling and elusive" film from the 52-year-old Portuguese auteur, "takes the viewer on a dreamy ride through colonial Asia in 1918", explains Deborah Young in her FILM VERDICT review of the director's new film, which is fanciful, not realistic."Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), civil servant, flees fiancee Molly (Crista Alfaiate) on their wedding day in Rangoon, 1917," IMDb explains. "His travels replace panic with melancholy. Molly, set on marriage, amused by his escape, trails him across Asia." But the present day "often pushes through the whimsical story," says Young. Gomez's mix of narrative and experimentalism divide audiences between the visionaries and the unconvinced, she says. Bradshaw gives it a 4/5 stars in his GUARDIAN review, but notes its oddity: British characters speak Portuguese; voiceovers are in the language of the country being visited, which include Bangkok, Saigon, Manila and Osaka. Bradshaw calls GRAND TOUR "six parts beguiling to one part exasperating." "Beautiful and bold, if not always believable," is the "bottom line" of Jordan Mintzer's HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review. Finding Gomes's three-part 2015 ARABIAN NIGHTS (NYFF) to be hard going, I described the director as "an uneven but original and imaginative filmmaker." I described his breakthrough film, TABU (NYFF 2012): "The story like a Somerset Maugham short story without the punch line, or Hemingway one without the moral complexity. It's a bit shallow; but it's nonetheless beautiful, stylish, and inventive."

GRAND TOUR has come to #2 on the SCREEN DAILY jury grid with 3.0, with San Baker's ANORA at the top at 3.3 now. MARCELLO MIO is at the bottom with 1.4. MOTEL DESTINO (Karim Ainouz) is at 1.9, just above OH, CANADA.