Holy Motors

Who knew? Leos Carax, dream­er, cinephile, over-reach­ing fab­u­list, chain-smok­ing torch­bear­er for the artis­tic ideals of the Nou­velle Vague of the ​’60s and the ciné­ma du look of the ​’80s, has final­ly made a film that’s wor­thy of his esteemed rep­u­ta­tion. Though tempt­ing to try and state in finite terms what Holy Motors is, it’s far too rich, mys­te­ri­ous and play­ful to cosi­ly index. This is a loose-leaf odyssey that flies in the face of easy interpretation. 

But we shall take a punt. Or at least offer a few read­ings of events. Take one: it’s a film exam­in­ing the past, present and future of movie act­ing. A stul­ti­fy­ing, super­hu­man per­for­mance from Carax muse Denis Lavant pow­ers Holy Motors through its nine chap­ters (plus churn­ing, accor­dion-dri­ven entr’acte).

He plays the world-weary Mon­sieur Oscar, wind­ing through Paris in a stretch Limo that’s being dri­ven by Édith Scob – the masked human pin-cush­ion in Georges Franju’s 1960 mas­ter­piece, Eyes With­out a Face. Every time he steps out­side for an ​‘assign­ment’, he is trans­formed into a new sce­nario, a new sto­ry, inhab­it­ing an entire­ly new body and soul.

First he’s a bag lady, then a motion cap­ture stunt­man, then a crack­pot elfin sew­er dweller with a wispy gin­ger beard who eats banknotes/​fingers/​hair, then a wor­ried father pick­ing up his daugh­ter from a par­ty, then a Chi­nese gang­ster, then assas­sin, etc. The film offers a win­dow onto the joy and sad­ness of act­ing as an occu­pa­tion, as Oscar flits between ​‘char­ac­ters’ while nev­er hav­ing ample time to attend to and shape his own. A less­er tal­ent than Carax may not have been able to flip between the com­ic, the trag­ic, the inti­mate and the extra­or­di­nary with such immac­u­late grace.

All the while, Holy Motors retains a seduc­tive tinge of melan­choly. It con­stant­ly reminds us of the man behind the mask as Oscar – with hack­ing cough and spi­ral­ing drink prob­lem – knows that he’s not going to be able to do this ​‘job’ for­ev­er. Which brings us neat­ly to anoth­er read­ing of the film, one relat­ed to the idea of tech­nol­o­gy and how dif­fi­cult it is to adapt to ram­pant modernity.

In Lavant’s chameleon­ic per­for­mance, Holy Motors makes a plea for the sim­ple joys of the organ­ic. It roman­ti­cal­ly pores over Oscar’s care­ful appli­ca­tion of make-up for each new life he cre­ates. At numer­ous junc­tures it pokes fun at a dystopic future where grave­stones cyn­i­cal­ly direct mourn­ers to web pro­files, cam­eras are invis­i­ble to the human eye and cars talk to each oth­er about death anxiety.

There’s also an amaz­ing scene inside the derelict Samar­i­taine depart­ment store in which crop-haired Kylie Minogue deliv­ers a stir­ring musi­cal num­ber. The scene oper­ates as a pow­er­ful lament for the doe-eyed sin­cer­i­ty of the MGM musi­cal as well as this gor­geous, grand old Art Deco build­ing that has been allowed to fall into ruin. Even the name Oscar can be read as a link to the super­fi­cial glam­our of the Hol­ly­wood dream factory.

But then it could also – in the best tra­di­tions of Godard – be a meta­phys­i­cal piece about the roles, respon­si­bil­i­ties and real­i­ty-shap­ing capa­bil­i­ties of the film direc­tor. What can film­mak­ers do to tran­scend the stric­tures of genre? In this case, the answer is to quote rather than exploit. In the film’s mys­te­ri­ous pro­logue, Carax him­self is seen falling out of bed then pass­ing through a wall to the bal­cony of a pic­ture palace. This film is a glimpse inside the inner-work­ings of his mind, and utter­ly pre­ten­tious though it may ini­tial­ly appear, it’s a move which, in the end, only adds lay­ers of cred­i­ble ambi­gu­i­ty to the deliri­ous proceedings.

In the end, Holy Motors could also be seen as a very sad film about the onslaught of death. Mon­sieur Oscar’s shape-shift­ing mys­tery tour of Paris is itself a metaphor for the vari­ety of life’s expe­ri­ence and the crush­ing fact that it’s all over too damn swiftly.