There's Very Little Beautiful in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

Everything is calibrated, calculated, and chiseled in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, from the design of its stylish opening credits to the color palette of the protagonists' clothing, to the umbrellas strategically provided whenever it starts to rain. Spontaneity is completely absent from this project, which is refined in its intentions and execution, and tries to imbue every gesture, place, and scene with a deep meaning beyond the surface.

It's no surprise that the new film by Kogonada – a filmmaker already beloved in cinephile circles and the author of that indie sci-fi gem titled After Yang – is so precise and accurate stylistically and visually, nor that it takes a specific genre (romantic comedy) and places the protagonists' feelings at its center, understood not only in a romantic but also an existential key. After all, we also find Colin Farrell here, who in both films questions the meaning of his life and that of past and present relationships, which he finds himself weighing in retrospect. We meet him at the beginning of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, heading to a wedding alone: his David is convinced that his existential condition is precisely solitude, and he has partly accepted it.

Rental Cars and Broken Hearts

When his car breaks down, he discovers a bizarre car rental agency whose name resembles a lonely hearts club. They only have two cars available – two 1994 Saturn SLs, long since discontinued – and the two employees of the strange agency (Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline) insist that David rent a traditional GPS. After a fleeting encounter with the beautiful and sharp Sarah (Margot Robbie) at the aforementioned wedding, after missing the opportunity to try and strike up a relationship with her (who at one point, very seriously, even proposes marriage to him), David finds her the next morning in a car identical to his, with a GPS that challenges them both to embark on the big bold journey of the title.

Written by Seth Reiss, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey increasingly immerses its characters in a universe dominated by magical realism, where mysterious doors lead them both into each other's past, searching for the reason why he decided not to want or deserve emotional involvement beyond mere casual acquaintance, and why she is more prone to hurting a potential partner rather than truly opening up honestly in the nascent relationship. The answer lies, predictably, in both their families and parents, in past romantic experiences, in relationships they haven't thought about in a long time but have never truly ended, questioning the quality and morality of their choices in the matter. Each door is a catharsis and a mutual drawing closer to each other, the perception that the destination of this journey is a future together.

Love in Theory, with Little Emotion and Zero Feeling

It should, in short, be a very melancholic and sometimes sad romantic comedy, requiring its protagonists to confront their traumas and unspoken feelings to truly consider a future together. However, although the film is carefully written and directed with its usual, subdued elegance, and although Colin Farrell is intense and Margot Robbie truly magnetic in a role similar to a perhaps slightly repentant manic pixie girl, the film never truly works. For such particular films, which transport the viewer into the dimension of the absurd and the magical alongside protagonists who are always sharp, often profound, it is fundamental to immediately find the right emotional wave. The one that, in short, keeps you engrossed in the plot, participating in the joys and sorrows of the characters, even a little seduced by them.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, however, remains detached, cold, and often irritating in its feeling and being, in essence, so intelligent yet incapable of translating all the sentimental theory it stages into authentic emotion. The sum of why this film doesn't work is given by the fact that it has two excellent protagonists, talented, beautiful, and seductive, who witness each other's foundational sentimental moments, yet seem more engaged in theoretically discussing what they are feeling than being carried away by that same feeling. It's not a lack of chemistry; it's precisely that the film remains stuck on the cold instructions of a GPS that illustrates the journey to the destination step by step, without ever letting us enjoy it. Lacking connection with the viewer and that certain feeling between the two protagonists, every deliberate choice of the film (the way rain is used to emphasize the protagonists' emotional state, what the primary colors they constantly wear in a complementary way suggest) seems incredibly pedantic, where it should be brilliant.

Only in the final stages does the film achieve a certain emotional dimension, coincidentally when, for a brief interlude, the two characters are alone grappling with the pivotal moment of their past, which has most shaped the negative aspects of their personalities. In short, it works better as a story of two protagonists who find themselves traveling a part of the road together than as the story of the birth of an emotional bond.