Holy Motors
Directed by Leos Carax
Written by Leos Carax
with Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Kylie Minogue
2012
At no point does this film fully reveal itself, but there’s something in it that keeps you watching and even draws you in. In terms of what’s happening here, the best I can do is that there is a man known as Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) who works for some kind of illuminati-type organisation, whose job is to be driven around Paris in a limousine attending “appointments”, which involve his acting in a particular role at a specific time and location. Sometimes these involve kindness, other times incredible cruelty; sometimes they are public acts, sometimes they occur in private where no-one could possibly know about them, others yet involve no-one but a person who is revealed to be a member of the same organisation as him, acting out an obscure little dialogue for no apparent purpose. He murders himself twice.
These performances make no logical sense – exactly what kind of role Oscar is fulfilling and what happens to those identities once he is done is never made clear. They cannot be part of a deus ex machina scheme as many have no effect on anything but himself and his colleagues. The conclusion that has to be made, and which gives a function to the initially inexplicable opening scene, is that the audience for his work is us, the one on the other side of the fourth wall. We could extrapolate from that and say that Holy Motors is about the (increasing?) artifice of cinema, and perhaps life itself, but really you have to go see it for yourself.
I think the reason this film succeeds despite itself is that the surreal elements are firmly rooted in a mundane Paris. This accentuates the weirdness while making the viewer more likely to be intrigued as to what is actually going on, and maintains a sense of conspiracy about Oscar’s actions as opposed to making them merely deranged. The fact that the story remains esoteric up to the end will clearly put off a large section of the potential audience, but it’s also funny, endlessly striking and imaginative, and experimental without completely (note italics) disappearing up it’s own arse. Lavant is nothing short of astonishing to watch; he has no less than eleven parts in this film, of such variety that it’s almost an entire acting career packed into a single, literally multi-faceted performance. Also, there’s a musical interlude involving a street band, an empty church, and at least five accordions – I actually lost count of accordions. I'd re-watch it for that scene alone.
Tom
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