Here’s a delicate, low-stakes journey documentary a couple of couple’s 5,000-mile street journey throughout India and Bangladesh in a classic automobile. Jan and Rupert Gray loaded up their Thirties Rolls-Royce and set off from Mumbai. In interviews, Jan has described them as “an aged English couple driving an aged English motor”. However in all honesty, these two are a pair of ageless evergreen boomers, recreating a backpacking journey on the hippy path they did within the 60s.
There are some mildly bushy moments alongside the way in which: mechanical hassle inevitably; and a spot of trouble with anti-government rebels. Rupert will get roped into appearing in a Bollywood film, a small half enjoying a detestable colonial-era governor. The nastiness doesn’t come naturally to him however the aristocratic vowels do. Rupert, a outstanding media lawyer, is the great-grandson of Nineteenth-century prime minister Earl Gray.
Really, what makes the couple so likable is that they’re delicate of their privilege. Rupert jokes that they’re a pair of “upper-class English folks poncing about India”. However they’re courteous travellers who have gotten, as one pal places it, “international good manners”. Saying that, the Greys’ affect is useful when the Rolls will get caught on the Bangladesh border; Rupert has a phrase with a authorities minister and poof, the issue disappears.
As a travelogue, the movie maybe has extra to say in regards to the couple than the locations they go to – it’s a love story as a lot as anything. Jan wasn’t eager on the journey, however didn’t need to be aside for six months. Rupert is an extrovert, a risk-taker; although one other pal means that Jan might be the stronger of the 2. It is a well mannered portrait, shot at arm’s size – in the event that they ever argued, we don’t see it. It’s a movie of restricted curiosity maybe, however one thing for the Gray household to treasure.
Romantic Highway is launched on 8 October in cinemas.