A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY Review: Kogonada Directs a Delightful, Whimsical Romantic Fantasy
Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie star.
A familiar, if no less unwelcome, rite of passage for car-owning city dwellers, getting “booted” (i.e., an anti-mobilization device attached to the law-breaker's automobile) can not only ruin your day, it can ruin your week, month, and possibly year.
For David (Colin Farrell, The Penguin, The Banshees of Inisherin), the co-lead in filmmaker Kogonada’s (After Yang, Columbus) latest film, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, it’s the start of a magical, mysterious, mystical experience across time, space, and love of the romantic kind.
A self-described bachelor seemingly content to live and travel alone, a day trip outside the city for a friend’s wedding goes immediately awry when David discovers his car booted, heavy rain falling everywhere, and a curious sign advertising a generic “Car Rental Agency,” pinned on the wall near his now useless car, thus beginning one of a self-consciously quirky, idiosyncratic, and whimsical romantic fantasies in recent memory.
The car rental agency operates out of a warehouse containing two cars, both 1994 Saturns, each one equipped with a singular GPS (voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith), and two uniquely unprofessional customer service representatives, a soft-spoken Mechanic (Kevin Kline) and a garrulous, German-accented Cashier (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who not only speak in perplexing cryptograms, but also seem to know more about David than David knows about himself.
But with non-stop rain falling outside and a wedding in a few hours, David acquiesces to the couple’s suggestions, including that all-important GPS that will take him to points known, unknown, and everywhere in between.
Whether the car rental reps are agents of fate, destiny, or what-have-you remains an unanswered, ultimately unimportant question as David, once at the wedding, inadvertently meets his soul-mate, Sarah (Margot Robbie). Like David, Sarah isn’t romantically involved with anyone, a deliberate choice given that. like David or, rather, the actors playing them, Sarah can’t be described as conventionally unattractive (the opposite, actually). If they’re single, it’s by choice or because they have deep-seated commitment issues.
From that oddball encounter, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey takes David and Sarah on a road trip determined by the intrusive GPS voice, sometimes in a forest, sometimes in a field, each time transcending space and time by the simple opening of a door. David visits a painful high-school memory involving a professional-level performance of How To Get Ahead in Advertising, while Sarah revisits her mother’s last moments on this mortal plane.
Directing from a screenplay credited to Seth Reiss (The Menu), Kogonada, a rigorously minimalist filmmaker, at least by the standards set by his previous films, opts for a near maximalist approach here, emphasizing super-bright colors, smoothly mobile camerawork, and enhanced visuals this side of the spectacular. As Sarah and David embark on a joint voyage to self-discovery, self-realization, and thus, self-actualization, Kogonada and Reiss translate their metaphorical journey into the literal one of the title.
By necessity, self-actualization involves self-reflection and self-reflection involves excavating often painful memories, still potent traumas (heartbreak for both to varying degrees), and a newfound willingness to accept not just their individual faults, mistakes, and blunders but to make the personal changes, up to and including the risk-taking necessary to enter into a near mid-life romance, They might be damaged, but they’re not irrevocably irredeemable.
Given its fantastical premise, undeniably attractive leads, and the relatively low, non-world-changing stakes, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey qualifies as a vibe flick through and through. Audiences either buy into its unironic, earnest sincerity or they don’t, but for those who do take the buy-in offer, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey offers its share of pleasures courtesy of Kogonada’s flair for visual composition, highly comedic dialogue, and committed, heartfelt performances by Farrell and Robbie as the objects of each other’s desire.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey opens Friday, September 20, only in movie theaters, via Sony Pictures Releasing. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
Director(s)
- Kogonada
Writer(s)
- Seth Reiss
Cast
- Colin Farrell
- Margot Robbie
- Phoebe Waller-Bridge
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