Grand Tour is best described as an epic and fantastical feast of untold dishes from around the world. Some you’ve tasted, some you’ve heard of, some you’re not even sure how to eat. If you’ve been begging for a movie to give you something to chew on, reach for Grand Tour. It will leave you positively stuffed. Any single description of the film — a comedy, an experiment, a love story — can only scrape the surface. It bends genres and floats through time, all while being a sumptuous visual delight. It’s no wonder Miguel Gomes took home the Best Director prize at Cannes.

So what’s this cinematic banquet made of anyway? It’s 1917 Burma (now known as Myanmar). Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) is reuniting with his fiancée Molly (Crista Alfaiate). After seven long years apart, they’re finally going to tie the knot. But standing on the train platform in the pouring rain, bouquet in hand, Edward decides to run, jilting her before she can even arrive. Molly, however, is unflappable and simply takes off after him. Hot on his heels, their would-be reunion turns into a whirlwind journey across Asia.

While the story takes place over 100 years ago in countries that no longer exist in those forms, Gomes slips in snippets of modernity to jerk us back into the present. While a narrator helps keep us grounded in the story, the screen shows faces in modern-day Bangkok or China doing everything from reading fortunes to singing karaoke. The gorgeous black and white cinematography suddenly shifts to full color, just for a moment, for fair workers spinning a manually operated Ferris wheel, Thai shadow puppets acting out a drama, or New Year’s Eve fireworks. All the color is startling and seemingly unpredictable.

It transforms the story of Molly and Edward into something eternal. It’s 100 years ago. It is now. It’s 100 tomorrows from today. Molly and Edward are uniquely themselves and also anyone or perhaps everyone. 

Grand Tour develops a liquid quality, like poured mercury. It exists in a strange and unfamiliar state of being. But that’s not to argue there’s no method or structure to the film’s playful construction. It’s divided cleanly into two halves: first, we see things from Edward’s point of view, then Molly’s.

Waddington plays Edward as a blank slate. He doesn’t seem to know why he’s doing anything he does. He’s reactive, but almost empty. That doesn’t give the viewers much to grab onto. As a result, the first half is a bit of a struggle.

Then we finally meet Molly, and Alfaiate’s performance lets her take up the whole screen. She gives the character a tight-lipped, spitting laugh deployed almost like a tick. But as grating as it can be to hear, it’s the only laugh that properly communicates what Molly’s feeling. That Edward is being positively ridiculous. That this whole chase, this whole ordeal is ridiculous! Little details like this remind viewers that for all its complicated composition, Grand Tour is still a comedy. And a silly one at that.

As Molly follows Edward across the continent and we get more and more glimpses of what life looks like in these places today, it’s as easy to lose yourself in Grand Tour as it is for Edward to disappear in a bamboo forest. 

We wander through the film together with only the vaguest notions of where we’re going, pulled along by a current we can’t see. Even when the film is at its most abstruse, it’s captivating. Days after viewing, days after this feast, I can’t stop chewing on it, rolling it around in my head like a taste I can’t forget.

Grand Tour sets the table in theatres starting March 28.

Grand Tour Trailer: