GRAND TOUR - Mark Reviews Movies

Grand Tour, Mubi

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 27, 2025

The man at the center of Grand Tour doesn't seem to have any rational reason for fear, worry, or sadness. He is about to marry the woman he says he loves. She's traveling halfway across the world from London to Myanmar (then Burma, during the period of the story's setting), but something inexplicable comes over him while he stands on the pier, awaiting the arrival of her ship.

At the core of co-writer/director Miguel Gomes' movie is a story of dual and dueling ironies. On one side, there is David (Gonçalo Waddington), the man whose bride-to-be—until he has second thoughts—in on her way. He's a seemingly dull civil servant for the British government, living and working in Rangoon (modern-day Yangon) in 1918 in a country under colonial rule. We don't learn much about this man or his job, except that everyone assumes—rightly so, likely—that it is boring and tedious work for which David is well-suited.

One of the several narrators of the tale explains that this man is ready to be married. After all, he's wearing a fine suit and gathers exotic flowers for his fiancée, so that they can be wed almost as soon as she steps off the boat. Here, though, becomes the story of an extreme case of cold feet, because David will soon be traveling throughout Asia, hiding out in hotels and hostels, taking assorted boats and trains and other less-modern means of transportation in his constant efforts to get as far away from his fiancée as possible.

The irony of David's story, of course, is that none of this is necessary, lines up with his feelings toward this woman, or is as effective as he would imagine it to be. The woman's own desire to marry David is as unflinching as his spontaneous impulse to flee her and, by extension, everything good that might come from a marriage to a woman he loves—one who is clearly as devoted to this guy as any person can be toward a romantic partner, for that matter.

That's the foundation of the other irony of this story, but to speak of it too early would be to give away part of the game of the screenplay, written by the director with Mariana Ricardo, Telmo Churro, and Maureen Fazendeiro. It's not much of surprise, to be sure, although it feels that way within the telling of tale, since the movie is so focused on David, his country-spanning adventures, and his mood, which is sorrowful in equal parts for what his life could become if he does marry and what might happen to his fiancée when she eventually realizes that he is attempting to escape her.

There's not much to this man's story, in other words, since we get both the gist and the full extent of his internal conflict almost as soon as he does decide to board a boat instead of waiting for the fiancée to dock. Once we realize that there is an entire second act to this story, however, Gomes makes it clear that the only thing more boring about David than his personality and job is this attitude toward marriage, as some kind of perceived detriment to his ability to live as a free man.

It takes a juxtaposition to make that point, however. For a while, we do just follow David from one country, one bustling city, and one remote location to the next. He is seeing things he has never seen before, visiting places he has never been, and meeting interesting people with unique lives and experiences of their own to discuss. On top of that, all of those things exist outside of the time of the era in which David is living, as Gomes intercuts the period narrative, shot in black and white, with modern documentary footage of those cities and other sights. While seeing and doing all of this, though, David is just miserable. It's tough to tell if he's more afraid of his fiancée somehow finding him—and finding his motive out—or of losing her in some way.

The experience of watching this character and this rambling narrative is, well, about as shallow as David's supposed existential crisis itself. To be sure, Gomes' approach, which is as much a travelogue of these assorted locations as it is David's story (if the first is not more so than that second part), does keep the man at a certain, appreciated distance. If he can't appreciate the good fortune of his possible future, how could he even consider what's right in front of him in all these various places?

Thankfully, this isn't just David's story. The game here is that is also and more solidly the fiancée tale. She's Molly (Crista Alfaiate), who takes over the second half of the movie, follows David (a fact we already know from his side of the story), and genuinely takes in everything and everyone she meets along the way. The irony here is that Molly has plenty of reasons to be sad and in despair, but she's not in the slightest.

Grand Tour, then, does become a comedy of simple comparison. It's funny and genuinely alive as soon as Molly, played with joy and an infectious chortle by Alfaiate, but like the self-involved mourning of David's tale, the movie's extended punch line is obvious and becomes a bit repetitive.

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