In a little break from tradition, Lisa Laman is reviewing TWO movies in slightly abbreviated forms in one piece! Below check out her thoughts on A Nice Indian Boy and Grand Tour.
A Nice Indian Boy (dir. Roshan Sethi)
My first exposure with director Roshan Sethi came with his 2021 feature 7 Days, which was headlined by Karan Soni and Geraldine Viswanathan. One of several 2021 indie comedies filtered through a COVID-19 gaze, 7 Days had inevitable shortcomings from being filmed under such constrictive circumstances. However, there was discernible talent there, particularly with Sethi’s impressive ability to bring out Soni and Viswanathan’s best traits as actors. Now, Sethi has returned with Soni in tow for the deeply charming rom-com A Nice Indian Boy. With a larger scope and a sweet screenplay, Sethi’s filmmaking chops are really cooking now.
Naveen Gavaskar (Karan Soni) is a buttoned-up doctor whose resigned himself to not expressing his emotionally eternally. The prospect of getting a perfect wedding, like his sister Arundhathi (Sunita Mani) got years earlier, seems like a pipe dream. It’s better to just focus on work rather than gnawing loneliness inside. But then Naveen runs into cute photographer Jay Kurundkar (Jonathan Groff). In classic rom-com fashion, screenwriters Eric Randall and Madhuri Shekar paint Jay as the total opposite of Naveen. Here’s a guy whose prone to bursting out into song on the street rather than keeping all his thoughts bottled.
Yet Naveen and Jay fall for each other, a situation that strain’s Naveen home life. In an inspired twist, Randall and Shekar don’t make Naveen’s parents, Megha (Zarna Garg) and Archit (Harish Patel), intolerant. On the contrary, they know all about his sexuality and try to awkwardly support it. Megha amusingly calls up her son on weekday mornings to breathlessly recount the plot of Milk while anytime Naveen travels to his parents’ house, shows about tropical twinks on the Out Network is always on full blast. The prospect of being open about his romantic life around his parents leads Naveen to once again suppress everything, even as his feelings for Jay grow deeper.
Few A Nice Indian Boy plot turns will leave viewers gasping in surprise. However, what Sethi and company do bring to the table is a sense of sincerity missing from bigger-budget romantic exercises. While films like Heart Eyes can’t stop winking at the audience even when things get lovey dovey, A Nice Indian Boy lets moments of intimacy breath without any self-conscious snarky lines. Within this approach, it becomes much easier to invest in Naveen’s plight. Plus, performers like Garg, Patel, and Sony excel not having to cap off all their vulnerable moments with a snarky one-liner.
That endearing energy works best in A Nice Indian Boy’s first two acts, with the film’s home stretch struggling a bit to keep up the creative momentum. Once a big piece of conflict between Naveen and Jay gets resolved, subsequent forms of more low-key interfamilial turmoil between Naveen and his parents just don’t feel as urgent. Meanwhile, Arundhathi’s subplot about receiving harsher treatment from her parents compared to Naveen sputters out without receiving a really satisfying resolution. Thankfully, even this section of A Nice Indian Boy has some great subtle acting from Harish Patel, not to mention a handful of delightful crowdpleaser moments. A Nice Indian Boy doesn’t upend expectations, but it knows how to sprinkle in idiosyncrasies and craftsmanship into rom-com norms.
Grand Tour (dir. Miguel Gomes)
Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) is getting married. Kind of. Well, he was supposed to. This European man was betrothed to Rangoon citizen Molly (Crista Alfaiate), only for Edward to abandon her hours before their wedding. From here, Edward embarks on a journey across countless countries like Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam, among others. In the second half of Grand Tour’s screenplay (penned by Telmo Churro, Maureen Fazendeiro, Mariana Ricardo, and director Miguel Gomes), Molly begins pursuing Edward. This woman, prone to fits of laughter, is determined to retrieve her fiancée.
Told in black-and-white, Grand Tour is filtered through a very precise visual scheme evoking slow cinema. More specifically, Gomes constantly focuses the camera for long periods of time on elements unrelated to our lead characters. Various unseen narrators regale audiences with sagas of Edward frantically running through the woods or Molly and her friend Ngoc (Lang Khê Tran) leaving on a boat, but the camera doesn’t focus on these people. Instead, the audience’s line of vision is filled with two random men on a pier (while Molly and Ngoc’s boat is in the distance on the left side of the frame) or a pair of pandas playing in a tree.
It's an intriguing visual motif that mirrors the unreliable nature of second-hand accounts. We’re being told anecdotes about the past, a form of relaying information that can often leave out or contort important details. That’s where that old game of “telephone” comes from! Thus, Gomes keeps the camera focused on “unrelated” material while expository narration dominates the soundtrack. We just have to trust that these narrators are reliable, since there’s no visuals on-screen to indicate their authenticity. Considering Molly’s misplaced faith in Edward NOT being a cowardly fiancée, it’s a bold imagery-based decision echoing Grand Tour’s emphasis on people who don’t really know each other.
Edward is terrified of marriage to a woman he doesn’t know, while Molly overestimates Edward’s moral character. Neither of them has the full picture of the other, just as audiences don’t have every possible detail about the stories Grand Tour’s narrator’s relay.
All the information and details packed into just this visual motif suggests Gomes must’ve done something right with Grand Tour’s methodical and music-driven imagery. Still, even with so much room for compelling interpretation, I kept wishing Grand Tour delivered more interestingly arranged imagery to latch onto. 2024’s slow cinema classic Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell went even further with fascinatingly depriving visual information from viewers while making every scene resemble a captivating painting. Grand Tour didn’t quite take my breath away in its cinematography, the blocking is often downright routine. Meanwhile, its reliance on more conventional framing techniques for dialogue heavy scenes is incredibly disappointing.
Many of these contemplate, slower-paced arthouse films (namely the works of Chantal Akerman, Edward Yang, or Béla Tarr) are just as fascinating to actually watch as they are to unpack afterwards. Grand Tour never comes close to reaching those heights. Its bolder tendencies (including mixing loud needle drops with glacial visuals) are frequently admirable, but they don’t quite cohere into a satisfying larger whole. Even if it’s no Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Grand Tour’s audacious tendencies are commendable. Plus, any film that leaves me rambling about its unspoken thematic ambitions is far from a misfire. Grand Tour's no must-see destination, but it's got its fair share of noteworthy sights for its visitors.