“Holy Motors”
A Puzzlement
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Yes, I’ve seen “Holy
Motors,” but I’m hard-pressed to tell you what it’s about. This fascinating
French film is a surreal puzzlement. The hardcore film buffs who watched it
with me were left shaking their heads.
Director Leos Carax wants
you to scratch your head, I think.
In it, a man known as Mr.
Oscar rides to work in a big white limousine driven by his associate Céline. Mr. Oscar seems to be a master of
disguises, at one location posing as an old beggar woman, at another as a gibberish-speaking
madman who kidnaps a fashion model and drags her into the city’s sewers, at
another is a dying man visited by a young woman … among many others.
We voyeuristically travel
along with him and his livery driver, watching him change costumes in the back
of the limo, then be dropped off at his next appointment. From musical numbers
to gangster shootouts to simulated sex on a stop-motion soundstage to picking
up his daughter after a party, we’re never sure what’s real and what’s not.
But mostly not, you can
assume.
The one thing we do know
is that we’re watching a masterful kaleidoscopic performance by French actor Denis
Lavant (“Boy Meets Girl,” “Beau Travail”). The pug-faced chameleon is a
favorite of Leos Carax, who has collaborated with him on several films (“Lovers
on the Bridge,” “Tokyo!”).
For “Holy Motors,” the
director wanted a Lon Chaney or Charlie Chaplin. Or Lavant …who played a
Chaplin impersonator in Harmony Korine’s “Mr.
Lonely.”
Édith
Scob joins Lavant as Céline, sort of a Charon ferrying him about a Parisian
Styx in the white limo. Punctuating the cast is Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue, and
Michel Piccoli. And Carax himself appears in the opening scene as an enigmatic
character called Le Dormeur (“The Sleeper”).
Leos Carax sees his film
as “a science fiction scenario where organisms and visible machines share a
common superfluity.” Yep, a vast underground garage of limos serves as part of
the cast.
As
for these limos, Carax says, “They’re outdated, like the old futurist toys of
the past. I think they mark the end of an era, the era of large, visible
machines.” These so-called Holy Motors seem to link Mr. Oscar to some sort of parallel
universes in the film.
Moviegoers
seem to like “Holy Motors” even if they don’t understand it. Rotten Tomatoes
gives it a 91% rating. Critics describe the film as “captivating and
compelling,” “weird and wonderful,” and “the stuff of cinema itself.”
Even
if you’re not familiar with Leos Carax’s films, I think this is one time it’s
okay to take a ride from a stranger.
srhoades@aol.com
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