Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie Go on ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ of Empty Romance

Alci Rengifo

Kogonada’s “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” is a big, beautiful piece of photographic eye candy. Turn off the sound and you can admire the framing and lighting as if you were walking through a lush photo gallery. But like many pretty pictures, you are left wondering what else there is to it. Kogonada, a talented filmmaker, seems to be trying to break out of the arthouse world that has defined his work. He is attempting to reach the hilltop of popcorn romances that bring in audiences, while pretending this is a deep meditation on the nature of love itself. The director sticks to the rule that gorgeous people tend to be cinema’s avatars for Cupid. Colin Farrell paired with Margot Robbie make for good casting, but the two are in the curious position of trying to bring genuine heart to material that is otherwise nothing more than fluff.

David (Farrell) is on his way to a wedding somewhere (the movie has no clear location) when his car gets ticketed and booted. Left without a ride, David luckily sees a sign for “The Car Rental Agency.” The agency itself is a warehouse where an odd cashier (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and mechanic (Kevin Kline) only have a 1994 Saturn available. At the wedding David meets Sarah (Robbie) under rainy skies. They flirt, guessing both have broken hearts before. She asks to marry him, as a joke of course. When David gets back in the car, the supplementary GPS (voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith) asks David if he’s ready for a big bold beautiful journey. He says yes. The first step is to reunite him with Sarah at a Burger King. From there, they find a series of doors which are passageways into their pasts. Along the way they learn about why David is so cold about love and why Sarah is so damaged. 

This is a curious fantasy written by Seth Reiss, who seems to want to emulate surreal romances like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” by taking out all the heartbreak and edge. Never does the material strive to make David and Sarah truly fascinating as personalities. Their flaws are the kind that merit discussion with friends over drinks, not a cosmic trek through time and space. A trip back to David’s high school days reveals he was rejected by his big crush on the night they performed “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” It’s one of the movie’s better scenes because of how it plays with memory. David can recite to his crush who she will reject him for and who she actually ends up marrying. Farrell also does a heartfelt musical performance. As for character development, the moment helps establish that David longs for unreachable women. As an adult he chases after them intensely only to grow disillusioned once they actually date him.

Margot Robbie gets even more disappointing character traits only because they are so cliché when it comes to female roles. Sarah is basically a serial cheater who can’t hold a relationship because she tends to always sleep with someone else. She carries much baggage stemming from vague daddy issues. The script likes to casually glance over jarring revelations as when Sarah confesses she was having sex with her professor the night her ailing mother died alone. Instead of suggesting therapy or other useful self-help choices before getting into a fresh relationship, David suggests what Sarah needs is his big bold love. The movie can’t decide who is feeling what. At the beginning David is hesitant and Sarah bold. Then, for vague reasons David turns into a needy romantic while Sarah insists she’s a lost cause. 

What this film does have is wonderful visual texture. Kogonada established himself first as a video essayist exploring the work of directors like Wes Anderson, Ingmar Bergman and Yasujirō Ozu. He then made “Columbus,” an immersive drama about a troubled teen inspired by the title city’s architecture. In 2021 he made “After Yang,” a poetic drama, also starring Farrell, about AI and memory. As in those films, here Kogonada’s environments are rich panoramas of rain and delicate twilights. He loves to linger with cinematographer Benjamin Loeb on the way puddles glisten after a rain shower. Having a meal at Burger King becomes evocative in the eye of this movie. In streaming or Blu Ray it will be easy to shut off the sound if you just want to enjoy the filmmakers’ compositions. 

The rest of “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” is simply an allegory without focus. Nothing is explained about why The Car Rental Agency exists. Is it only meant to unite couples? If so, how does it even choose who to help? Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline can be a riot as the quirky agency workers. Oddly enough, we only see them twice and their own backstories never surface. Farrell and Robbie bring emotion, though at times a bit too subdued in Farrell’s case, to dialogue that makes “This Is Us” sound dark. The stakes are just too low and the characters lack chemistry. Instead of passion we get first world complaints from people whose great woe is to be good looking and lonely. Like a bad date at an expensive restaurant, it’s a big bold beautiful disappointment.

“A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” releases Sept. 19 in theaters nationwide.