‘You
see many states in the film, from the fatigue of being yourself to the glory of
re-inventing who you are” Carax adds, ‘There’s
never any initial idea or intention behind a film, but rather a couple of
images and feelings that I splice together.’[1] Images and feelings over storytelling?
The director Leos Carax appears in the
films prologue where he awakens in a dingy hotel room, he goes through the wall
of his bedroom, which is made to look like a forest, onto the balcony of a cinema
overlooking the audience and watching what appears to be a large dog walk down
the aisle towards the screen, perhaps a reference to the cinematic influences
that Holy
Motors (2012) contains.
 |
| M.Merde |
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could live your life
differently over and over again? Well that’s what Monsieur Oscar does, he’s
ferried around Paris by his elegantly beautiful chauffeur Celine in a large
white stretch limo changing his appearance and character in a series of ten
appointments all to be carried out in the space of one day.
 |
| Kay M shares a moment with M. Merde. |
Again Denis Lavant is reunited with Carax after appearing in
all his films except Pola X (1999) and
plays a total of eleven different roles including Monsieur Oscar and my own
favourite M. Merde (shit) in one of the best and funniest ‘appointments’ he
carries out, sharing this segment is the statuesque Eva Mendes who plays a
model called Kay M. I don’t want to explain in detail each of Oscars
incarnations because I feel it would spoil your enjoyment of these cinematic
adventures suffice to say that some are better than others but all hold a sense
of bewilderment and surprise and all are full of invention and energy.
 |
| Is it really Jean Seberg? |
The movie is full of surprises, not many
films have an intermission where a group of accordion players, including Lavant,
play some stunning music whilst walking through a candlelit church! Not many
movies give a worthwhile role to Kylie Minogue as a Jean Seberg look alike. Not
many movies reference George Franjue’s Eyes
Without a Face (1960) when the 75-year-old French actress Edith Scob, who
plays Oscars faithful driver Celine, dons the same mask she wore in that
classic French horror. Carax even uses the same once grand Parisian department
store La Samaritaine that played such a significant part of the backdrop in his
modern French fairy tale Les
Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991). Even the very final scene where
Oscar is taken ‘home’ after his days work and the stretch limo is taken back to
the garage for the night, gives us further revelations that we were not
expecting.
 |
| Celine with her face! |
Throughout his career, French filmmaker
Leos Carax has repeatedly baffled and shocked his audiences: from the exuberant
postmodern romance of Les Amants de Pont Neuf (The Lovers on the
Bridge, 1991), to the portrayal of incestuous love in 1999’s Pola X his last feature film, his latest
feature is undoubtedly his most confounding. Carax’s film reads as a tribute to
cinema itself, to the different worlds of which it allows us to become part for
a short period. Conversely, it may be read as a melancholic wish to be able to
live one’s life again, and differently
Holy
Motors is a truly imaginative piece of film
making that I will never forget. It will become a cult classic, discussed and
dissected over and over again, enthralling some and boring others. It’s
certainly not your normal narrative driven movie and owes nothing to the
mainstream! The only way to enjoy this privileged experience is to sit back and
absorb what is served up on the screen and what ever you do don’t question it,
don’t try and work things out, it will surely spoil the pure pleasure.
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