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IN BRIEF |
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Between the promise of a romantic wandering and contemplative delicacy, « A Grandiose and Audacious Journey » (A Big Bold Beautiful Journey) orchestrates the meeting of Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell under the ultra-composed eye of Kogonada. The film, an American drama from 2025 (1h49), intertwines a conceptually rich idea — an “adventure” initiated by a strange car rental agency aimed at matrimony — with an exploration of the memories of two strangers, Sarah and David. Despite Joe Hisaishi‘s muted music and a few elegant tableaux, the expected chemistry is discreet, and the staging, refined but restrained, seems to stifle the flamboyance promised by the title.
The premise opens on a coincidence: Sarah and David, two singles, cross paths at a wedding and, through a sort of orchestrated game, embark together on an experience designed to celebrate romantic momentum. The originality lies in the mediation of a company that, via a “guided” car and a playful protocol, propels the duo to the heart of fragments of their past lives. This device, fertile, promises an emotional journey that is both funny and sensitive, where the road becomes a theater of memory.
In fact, the itinerary proves to be more marked than anticipated. The narrative chooses the straight line where we hoped for secondary roads, unexpected stops, poetic accidents. This straightforwardness, assumed by the rigor of Kogonada, produces undeniable plastic elegance, but it also constricts the play area of Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell, whose trajectories remain parallel rather than truly converging.
The heart of the film beats in flashbacks, these vignettes where Sarah and David relive the brilliance of childhood, the sting of a first failure, the shadow of mourning. Kogonada frames them with an almost museum-like delicacy: pure lines, muted backlighting, inhabited silences. Yet, this constant beauty, so typical of the author of Columbus and After Yang, clashes here with the need for a romantic drive. The intimate remains at a distance, as if viewed through a glass.
The music of Joe Hisaishi adds a tender breath, clear layers that caress memories without emphasizing them. It imparts a breeze of melancholy to the sequences, sometimes moving, sometimes too polished. When the writing stretches the contemplative passages, the score seeks the sensitive wave but ends up underscoring a languid rhythm.
In the duo, Margot Robbie plays a lively, willingly ironic Sarah, whose smile hides fine lines of fracture. Colin Farrell, as David, cultivates a cautious softness, tinged with inwardness. The two actors depict characters porous to the world, but their chemistry seems half-lit, refracted by the film’s very concept that places them side by side without sufficient friction. We await the trigger, the fissure through which emotions respond: they surface, but rarely overflow.
The staging values looks, micro-gestures, restraint. This choice, consistent with Kogonada‘s cinema, here pays the price of a timid dramatic modulation: the relationship advances through grazing, without a true point of no return, while the idea of a “grand journey” perhaps called for a more pronounced loss of control.
The film flirts at times with too visible advertising, a product placement that stands out in an otherwise pure universe. This dissonance reminds us that not all collaborations align with the narrative. Conversely, some associative or eco-responsible initiatives, like the collaboration between Klean Kanteen and Protect Our Winters France, demonstrate how an alliance can carry a collective meaning and imagery: to read here Express your opinion – Klean Kanteen x Protect Our Winters France.
In the same vein, long-term cooperations, like hybrid projects oriented towards know-how and culture, find a more organic tone with their narrative proposition, as can be observed in certain creative collaborations that prioritize meaning over mere visual impact.
The motif of travel permeates the staging: paths drawn taut, skies at blue hour, gas stations as memory stops. As the itinerary unfolds its stages, the film claims a movement that is less geographical than sensitive. From this perspective, the narrative resembles an attempt at “interior tourism” — traversing what one thought one knew about oneself, but with a fresh gaze.
By contrast, the imagery of real movement recalls other more concrete trajectories: whether it is the dynamics of overseas territories highlighted during professional meetings like Top Resa – Tourism Overseas, or the circulation of narratives and audiences celebrated during the World Tourism Day. The film captures something of this tension between dreamed movement and concrete experience, without always igniting it.
Where one expected the unexpected, the narrative often adopts the logic of a souvenir album. The episodes unfold with a monochrome sweetness, then prolong at the risk of stretching. Reunions with childhood, the shyness of a first attachment, the wound of a renunciation: so many themes that the film outlines with tact, but which would benefit from exposing themselves to contradiction, surprise, the vivacity of an emotional “reverse angle.”
There remains the precision of the frame, the mastery of details, the art of letting a face settle in the light — all tools that Kogonada wields with remarkable fidelity. One feels the desire to preserve the fragility of the two characters, without rushing them. This admirable concern for delicacy, however, ends up filtering the sparks one hoped for from the encounter Robbie–Farrell.
The film unfolds in the United States, lasts 1h49, and presents itself as a contemporary drama, featuring a cast that includes, besides Margot Robbie (Sarah) and Colin Farrell (David), a salesperson played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and David’s father portrayed by Hamish Linklater. Each supporting appearance adorns the narrative with small rough edges, often ironized, which enliven the overall line without diverting it.
In the background, the idea of “collaboration” runs through the film, whether romantic, artistic, or industrial. The bridges between regions, publics, and skills are so many images that cinema loves to invoke, much like transboundary projects such as the Béarn–Aragon collaboration, where one sees how dialogue and movement shape a common map.
“Grandiose and audacious”: the title promises the ignition of an odyssey. However, the staging opts for restraint, the discreet, the chiaroscuro variation. The paradox is stimulating on paper, less convincing on screen when the drama becomes too regular. One remembers the beauty of the shots, the musical caress of Joe Hisaishi, the modest accuracy of Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell — all qualities that, however, seem to evolve under a lid, leaving “audacity” a role of ornament.
This “journey” then resembles a crossing at a regulated speed, where a few flashes hint at the film it could have been had the itinerary diverged. Like these trajectories of destinations that invent themselves in contact with passengers and territories, evoked in travel forums or days dedicated to mobilities, the work approaches the threshold of the unknown without always surrendering to it — a note that resonates with the ambitions and limitations of a title as promising as its path remains measured.
