Cannes film festival
Miguel Gomes’s beguiling and bewildering story follows a jittery fiance fleeing his intended across the British empire, and her hot pursuit

Once again, Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes delivers a film in which the most complex sophistication coexists with innocence and charm. It is at once very worldly and yet unworldly – in fact almost childlike at times. It is elegant, eccentric and needs some time to be indulged. The British characters are played by Portuguese actors speaking Portuguese, except for a few rousing choruses of the Eton Boating Song, which is in English. (There is more literal casting for other nationalities.) And yes, it is six parts beguiling to one part exasperating. But quite unlike any other film in the Cannes competition, it leaves you with a gentle, bemused smile on your face.

The story, co-written by Gomes, could be adapted from something by Somerset Maugham, but is in fact an original screenplay. (I was also reminded of Jane Gardam’s colonial novels or Evelyn Waugh.) In colonial Burma during the first world war, Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) is a minor British functionary in Rangoon, unhappily waiting for the arrival of the London boat, on which is the woman to whom he has for seven years been engaged: Molly (Crista Alfaiate). But Edward gets cold feet and before Molly arrives, he flees to Singapore, where he runs into his fiance’s rackety cousin in the bar of the Raffles hotel, and allows this seedy and excitable man to believe that his own extraordinary, furtive behaviour has something to do with spying.

Living like a hobo, Edward goes on to Bangkok, Saigon, Manila and Osaka, from where he is expelled by Japanese authorities for his suspected connection with US naval intelligence. Then he goes to Shanghai, Chongqing and Tibet where he sees pandas in the trees and meets an opium-addicted British consul who tells him the empire is finished and that westerners will never understand the oriental mind. But the formidable Molly is hot on his trail and not to be deterred.

Cannes film festival
Ali Abbasi’s film presents young Donald as an amoral narcissist, wastes the talent of Jeremy Strong and includes a grisly rape scene that is quickly glossed over

News: new film about Donald Trump depicts him as a rapist

Donald Trump will not be the smallest bit worried by this genially ironic, lenient TV movie-style treatment of his early adventures in 70s landlordism, property and tabloid celebrity – and his own apprentice relationship with dark legal sorcerer and Nixon intimate Roy Cohn, the bully whose connections added to Donald’s wealth and who taught him to lie to others and himself and never admit defeat. There had been many rumours here in Cannes before this film screened about its rape scene, of which, more in a moment.

Director Ali Abbasi has given us fascinating monsters in the past with Holy Spider and Border but the monstrosity here is almost sentimental, a cartoon Xeroxed from many other satirical Trump takes and knowing prophetic echoes of his political future. It’s basically a far less original picture, its ambience borrowed from Scorsese and Coppola – with Donald’s deadbeat elder brother Fred even getting a “Fredo” scene where he gets embarrassingly, tearfully drunk at a big event, like the loser he is. And like so many film-makers these days, Abbasi will keep swooning over the picturesque sleaze of 70s New York.