Across three features, essayist-turned-filmmaker Kogonada has established himself as a kind of experimental cinematic therapist in search of the ideal conditions under which to probe the human mind. His debut Columbus (2017) threw two strangers (John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson) up against an entire city of mid-century modern architecture, all smooth lines, bare concrete, and nowhere to hide. After Yang (2021) forced a couple (Jodie Turner-Smith and Colin Farrell) to evaluate their work as parents via a defunct robot with a hidden memory bank.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey now sees Turner-Smith and Farrell reunite – sort of – as a magical GPS system and the chronically single man she guides through an immersive, memory-recall road trip. Farrell’s David is joined on this trip by an equally unattached stranger, Margot Robbie’s Sarah. David and Sarah both have their excuses for why two such aggressively beautiful people have chosen to remain alone. They’re lying to themselves, of course. The truth can be found somewhere in their childhoods. Luckily, fate has saved them from some very pricey psychoanalyst appointments via a series of doors to the past, which materialise during the long drive back from a mutual acquaintance’s wedding.
Kogonada’s style is best described as a kind of sophisticated sentimentality. His characters largely come to the same motivational-poster conclusion that “life is better when you’re open”, as it’s phrased here. Only Kogonada neither wrote nor edited A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, and so we’re largely lacking in the sophistication department, or the soft musicality he’s been able to construct in his earlier films.
The actual screenwriter, Seth Reiss, and editors Susan E Kim and Jonathan Alberts are clearly aiming here for something broader and brighter. When Bright Eyes’ “First Day of My Life” hits the soundtrack, it becomes clear that this is, more than anything, paced and structured like a throwback to the Garden State (2004) era of whimsical indie romances, complete with Robbie’s own resuscitation of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”. She scarfs down burgers for every meal! She loves a baker-boy hat! She challenges David to a spontaneous breath-holding competition! She delivers every line like she’s about to blow pixie dust on him and scarper!
Yet Kogonada has an undeniable way with his actors, and despite the relative obviousness of the material, he still manages to mine some moving passages out of Robbie and Farrell (it’s apparent, however, that in the casting of David’s younger self, eyebrows took priority over Irish accent). Farrell, especially, has an undervalued versatility that extends far beyond what he does under pounds and pounds of Penguin makeup. He’s a performer with formidable control over his emotions, equally adept at tightening them like a drum when entering Yorgos Lanthimos’s deadpan worlds (in 2015’s The Lobster or 2017’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer), or, alternatively, delivering declarations of love here so open and forceful that you feel a sudden pressure as an audience member to respond.
Kogonada, whose visual essays diligently broke down various cinematic techniques, also takes the opportunity to include a few playful homages, from Jacques Demy to Jacques Tati (a veritable feast of Jacqueses). In fact, the strongest element of the film might, in fact, be the surreal establishing sequence in which David arrives at a rental-car company that consists of a single desk at one end of a gargantuan warehouse (very Tati), manned by Kevin Kline and a heavily accented Phoebe Waller-Bridge. They’re delightful caricatures in a film constantly fighting against the conventional. Perhaps Kogonada, for his next therapy session, should consider letting them take the lead.
Dir: Kogonada. Starring: Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. 15, 109 minutes.
‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ is in cinemas from 19 September
