Critics reviews

It doesn’t always make sense, but that’s part of its appeal – the way it carries you along like a benevolent sleep paralysis demon forces you to surrender to the beauty. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s incredible cinematography does a lot of the heavy lifting there, despite the film feeling a bit long towards the end.

With the beautiful cinematography, solid performances from the cast of the fictionalized elements, and some rich imagery from the non-fictional ones, Grand Tour is a stylishly admirable movie at the very least. However, any attempts at a compelling core narrative are lost through the lack of emphasis on Edward and Molly's stories and an overemphasis on the trips to these locales. The film does show that Gomes is capable of making an authentic period piece and a stunning documentary, but the attempt of trying to do both at the same time has led to an unusual experiment that will leave one scratching their head.

Grand Tour has a steady and deliberate pace, but as the viewer becomes familiar with Gomes’ modus operandi, the promise of surprises along this journey starts to lessen. That’s not to say Gomes runs out of ideas (Far from it; the film ends on a most unlikely needle drop), but a tighter edit might not have hurt.

Like an epic poem told through a multitude of voices, Miguel Gomes’s Grand Tour is a movie of unorthodox sweep and diffuse grace.

Gomes, known for blending narrative and documentary filmmaking in very creative ways, composes some scenes in a manner that [Chris] Marker’s dreamy vision would. Gomes has said that in his films, “fiction is capable of fictionalizing the images themselves”, and you see how these beautiful monochrome images contain a reverie that puts the viewer in a trance.

Even if the film’s construction never quite achieves Tabu’s perfectly calibrated poignancy, its consistent sense of excitement and discovery are a marked improvement over the stifling academicism of Gomes’s previous The Tsugua Diaries. For all of Grand Tour’s distancing effects, it never loses sight of the pleasures that drive us to the cinema in the first place.

Grand Tour nonetheless stands as a lesser entry in Gomes’ body of work, however, it is because the film does not, in the end, do much more than gesture... for all its concept-forward flourishes, it mainly resonates for how its production rhymes with the touristic gaze of Edward and Molly’s journey. Like a second-rate magic act, it leaves one not with a lingering sense of wonder, but only with a faint curiosity about how the trick was done.

Miguel Gomes is known for his playful homages to classic Hollywood cinema. Grand Tour is playful but moves into melancholy. There are three Grand Tours in Grand Tour... and all are illuminating and opaque. Grand Tour is a masterpiece of truth found within cinematic lies.

Grand Tour stands out for its ambitious blending of genres, time periods, and cinematic techniques. It builds on the themes and stylistic choices of Gomes' earlier works while pushing the boundaries of a more epic, or grand, narrative.

Whether shooting in the world or on a soundstage (this movie is of the kind that invites us to consider the two of equal importance), Gomes makes everything look excellent, to ends that are standard or sentimental... and the film’s play with the semantics of colonialism are surface, its comedy broad, with moments of extended languor leaned into for their own assertive sake. It was, nonetheless, beautiful enough to get me to enthusiastically buy into propositions I might normally reject...

[Miguel Gomes] delivered some of the most virtuosic filmmaking in the [Cannes] competition... with this characteristically yet extraordinarily playful colonial-era travelogue... [Grand Tour's] true fascination lies in the humid atmosphere and wanderlust-inspiring splendor of its East and Southeast Asian locations, ranging from Singapore and Bangkok to Shanghai and Rangoon. It’s a movie to get lost in.

Spellbinding... [Grand Tour] is an expansive, sweeping work that bends time, space, genre, and form. It is a wholly uncompromising experience that dances with mirth and melancholy.