A Big Bold Beautiful Journey opens doors to the past of its characters.Image: Sony Pictures
In the form of a rural and dreamy road trip, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey immerses you in the memories of its two characters, played by Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell.
30.09.2025, 18:5630.09.2025, 18:56
To make a good romantic comedy, you need two endearing characters who oppose each other, an unexpected encounter, an obstacle that prevents them from being together, as well as a satisfying resolution. It is precisely this recipe that you will find in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.
At least in substance, because in form, the film by American filmmaker of South Korean origin Kogonada (After that) takes a less conventional path, oscillating between fantasy and science fiction, without this being ever explicitly emphasized.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey tells the story of Sarah (Margot Robbie) and David (Colin Farrell), two lonely souls who, after meeting at a wedding, hit the road together in their rental car, equipped with a mysterious GPS. On the way back, through a bucolic road trip in the Californian hills, the coordinates provided by this strange device lead them to doors which, once crossed, allow them, in turn, to revisit the memories that have shaped their lives.
The trailer:
Video: extern / rest
Introspection my love
At the beginning of the second millennium, the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) by Michel Gondry broke the straitjacket of the romantic comedy with a work on love tinged with science fiction, in order to better explore this very non-rational emotion. In this film, Jim Carrey’s character uses a device to revisit his memories after a loss in love, with the aim of erasing them.
Having become a cult film, the concept of exploring feelings through technology has inspired numerous works, such as Her (2013) by Spike Jonze, where Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an artificial intelligence, or the series Severance (2022), which shows how technology allows employees to forget about their work.
These concept works rely on a marked artistic direction, a polished image and a cryptic universe, to better tell the essential: human emotions.
This car, a 1994 Saturn SL, has a very special GPS navigator.Image: Sony Pictures
So this is the wood that is made of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. You will know nothing about the mysterious GPS, nor will you know about the enigmatic company that provided our heroes with this futuristic and retro technology. The doors, scattered throughout nature and allowing characters to travel to the past, are more magic than science fiction. But it doesn’t matter: that’s not what the film is trying to tell.
The film seeks to decipher the experiences of its characters, the events and decisions that shaped them and led them to become what they are today. David is a disillusioned romantic, convinced he has never met the right person, while Sarah sabotages each of her relationships as soon as the feelings become too strong. As in therapy, the feature film explores each other’s experiences so they can better know and understand each other. Realizing where we come from to better know where we are going: such is the path taken by this “great journey, beautiful and daring”, to tell this budding love story between two beings.
Sarah and David meet at a rainy (but happy) wedding.Image: Sony Pictures
Since cinema has accustomed us to recounting life journeys strewn with pitfalls, we might regret that the ups and downs experienced by Sarah and David are not so dramatic. Broken hearts, childhood traumas, bereavements and unsaid things: nothing that therapy cannot resolve. This is perhaps the main flaw of the film: the characters don’t have much to tell. But that’s also what makes them endearing, because, in the end, they are ordinary characters, not so different from any of us. The great journey that we are sold is therefore in no way grandiose, but simply banal.
Something from Miyazaki
With its rural journey into the Californian wilderness, its lo-fi technology and its magical doors leading to the past, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is a work full of influences. There are of course the works mentioned above, but this film emanates a tenderness which does not come from nowhere and which can be found in the animated films of the Japanese studio Ghibli, and its illustrious director Hayao Miazaki. The film’s music, moreover, is composed by the Japanese Joe Hisaichi, who signed each of the master’s films.
“To love each other is to look together in the same direction,” wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.Image: Sony Pictures
The filmmaker Kogonada, whose real name is E. Joong-eun Park, does not hide it since he himself confirmed in an interview with Collider that his film was strongly influenced by Japanese animation, notably the film Your Name (2016) de Makoto Shinkai.
Despite its obvious boldness and charm, the tart candy that is A Big Bold Beautiful Journey nevertheless seems a little bland. Yet carried by exceptional actors forming an endearing duo, the film suffers from a lack of emotion which prevents it from touching our hearts. However, he manages to marvelously decipher this cynical era where romanticism gave way to fear of commitment. Loving remains an act of courage, faith and abandonment, and this film deserves at least to remind us of that.
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