In Anthony Bourdain’s travel & food series, Parts Unknown, he goes to Portugal to join his boss’s traditional pig-slaughter feast; it’s a beloved event in much of Europe. In the morning, they have the whole family come around – a good thirty or forty people – before six strong men hold the pig and slit its throat and hang it up to drain. The rest of the day is spent drinking, dancing, singing, and cooking. They spent the whole year fattening up the pig, so the meat is practically A5 Wagyu– tender, succulent, juicy and fatty. Each bite is then washed down with homemade wine, and there’s a great feeling of victory and triumph in the air. You’d love to be at a feast like this, but that doesn’t mean that seeing a pig get slaughtered–even on tv– isn’t jarring. It’s this odd mix of strange and wonderful new experiences that Grand Tour lives in.
Part period drama, part documentary, part something else entirely, it’s an adventure where a British civil servant in Burma, Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), hops between steam locomotives and long-tail boats while, inexplicably, a man sings his heart out on “My Way” in a Thai Karaoke bar. At first there’s a dizzying quality to the film as it switches between altering time periods, fact and fiction, and both black-and-white and colour visuals. With time, you acclimatise to it. You enjoy the quieter moments of a lotus picker wading through a pond or a monkey in a hot spring, before you continue with Edward’s journey.
The crux of the fictional story is that fearing his imminent marriage, Edward flees Rangoon to avoid his fiance, Molly (Crista Alfaiate). He takes his journey of self-discovery, then in the second half of the film we watch Molly’s journey as she follows hints and whispers of where he’s been. Both make for interesting travel companions; Edward is quiet, thoughtful, and there’s more documentary scenes to reflect this, while Molly is spirited and loud, with an odd sputtering laugh and a dalliance with a rich Vietnamese suitor.
So much comes together to make Grand Tour what it is. It takes inspiration from the travel stories of Kerouac, Duras, and Greene, the director visions of Wenders, Kubrick, and Kurosawa, but, most Grand Tour takes inspiration from the world around it, with it feeling like the documentary segments were shot while the crew were exploring each city they filmed in.
But none of these parts really capture the effect of the film. Disorientating, funny, fantastic, strange, and wholly unique, ironically you may watch Grand Tour and never wish to again, but guaranteed few will forget its impact.
FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Grand Tour is playing as part of this year’s Perth Festival’s Lotterywest Films, running between November 25th, 2024 to April 6th, 2025. For more information head to the official site here.
