By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Leos Carax
Starring: Denis Levant | Edith Scob | Eva Mendes | Kylie Minogue | Leos Carax | Michel Piccoli
Country: france, germany
Year: 2012
Running time: 115
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2076220/
Chris says: “Honestly one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen, and perhaps one of the most wonderful. In his first feature in over a decade, filmmaker Leos Carax(THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE), along with his regular collaborator, the wiry Denis Levant (BEAU TRAVAIL), jump further down the rabbit hole than previously before. However, instead of making a pretentious, inscrutable art film, they’ve created a gleefully deranged, sometimes outrageous but whimsical, unique and always good-natured art film in the spirit of Jacques Tati, with a little late-period Luis Bunuel around the edges.
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“Levant stars as a man primarily known as ‘Mr. Oscar’ (a play on the director’s real name, Alex Oscar Dupont) whose profession is to continually change personas for clients who hire him for ‘appointments’. He travels from one to the next in an elegant stretch limo driven by his no-nonsense chauffeur/confidante, Céline (Edith Scob). Applying meticulous disguises (including elaborate full-head masks), Mr. Oscar is a consummate performer, slipping from one role into the next, from an elderly man consoling his daughter from his deathbed to a heavily costumed actor filming a simulated sex scene on a motion-capture soundstage. In perhaps the film’s most memorable sequence, Levant as Mr. Oscar reprises his role as Mr. Merde, the foul, gobbledygook-spewing sewer creature who first appeared in Carax’s section of the omnibus film TOKYO! Here, he pursues and abducts bombshell model Kay M. (Eva Mendes), via a madcap jaunt through a Parisian cemetery.
“Naturally, any rational viewer will wonder why Mr. Oscar is hired to do what he does. Of course, Carax does not offer any explanations. HOLY MOTORS is undoubtedly a fantasy, but one that has a lot to say about what it means to act, to inhabit a role, to absorb and maintain an identity only to completely leave it behind and take on another one. Between applications, as he changes costumes in his limo, we receive glimpses of the real Mr. Oscar, a man forever withholding his own single identity. We begin to feel the weight and weariness such a life entails and it sets a poignant tone late in the film, particularly during a musical (!) number featuring Kylie Minogue. Still, just when you think Carax is on the verge of taking his fantasy too seriously, he concludes on a note that’s both beautifully resonant and gloriously insane. That last word is key, for HOLY MOTORS won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I highly recommend it if you love films where you have no idea where it’s going to go from one scene to the next but still fully enjoy the ride. 5 cats”
Jason says: “HOLY MOTORS is the sort of film that will occasionally get its maker described as ‘drunk on cinema’, just so utterly filled with passion for the medium and its possibilities as to be voluble and more capable of expressing emotion that mere rational thought. Of course, it’s also the sort of state where a person stumbles around, throwing up on the people he passes and rambling on about things that just sound silly to the sober. At least he’s got a designated driver.
That would be Céline (Edith Scob), who arrives early in the morning to pick up Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) in a limousine and drive him to a series of ‘appointments’. Oscar is an actor of sorts, and the car his mobile dressing room where he removes his wigs, dons prosthetic makeup, and transforms himself into a new person for each stop, only occasionally allowing the audience to see the man behind the blank when he interacts with Céline or other actors between gigs.
The main problem with HOLY MOTORS is, as can often be the case with ambitious and unusual works, also the thing that makes it interesting: An ambitious conceit that allows it to leap between genres and styles while commenting on the nature of cinema itself. Writer/director Leos Carax has a nifty idea, an actor quite capable of handling his chimera of a role and the crew to make it work on-screen, but for as much power as both the idea itself and the individual bits may have, they seldom connect, or even come close enough to have a spark jump between them. The film only rarely produces delight, and when its goal appears to be satiric, that falls flat, too.
“Consider the third or fourth segment, where Lavant reprises the character of ‘Merde’ from Carax’s segment of TOKYO!. The segment suffers badly in comparison; its zaniness is undercut from the very start by the larger film’s structure points out the artificiality of every one of the sub-films; this one is further compromised by lines before it that hint that Oscar is going to rush through this particular ‘assignment’ and a photographer who delightedly asks to shoot Merde because ‘he’s so weird!’ The execution of the gags seldom seems as crisp as it was in Tokyo!, and even when it is, the set-up is designed to elicit a feeling of superiority, whether it’s ‘ha-ha, this is the sort of absurdist slapstick that the common man doesn’t get’ or ‘ha-ha, it’s pretentious and not very good but I see that the filmmaker is trying to make a point around it being pretentious and not very good,
which I get!’
“Granted, part of the problem with that segment is just that there’s a superior analog to compare it to, but the other segments share the same sort of hollowness: Even when Lavant and collaborate on a scene that is undeniably well-done, there’s always the reminders that it’s not real and that the people involved will go and do something else right afterward. It’s a constant repudiation of what pleasure the audience received from what they just saw and erasure of consequences, and the underlying idea, that making movies involves surrendering oneself completely to this imaginary world, is much more intellectual than emotional. The audience can see how Carax is playing, and talking about cinema while apparently showing this surreal other world, and that’s fine and enjoyable; he’s got plenty of thoughts on the subject. He teases the audience with a few nifty possibilities as the film goes along, and the avoidance of true resolution makes them even more fun to play with.
“And the cast certainly gives this movie their all. Denis Lavant is plenty impressive, not just because he plays a number of roles, but because plays them all so well. It’s not terribly long before it’s clear that much of what is going on is just elaborate constructs, but Lavant/Oscar disappears into his roles so thoroughly and invests them with enough emotion that the audience can certainly feel something in the moment. Edith Scob is an almost ideal complement to him as Céline; she injects enough personality to make their interactions interesting but never overpowers Oscar’s between-appointments blank state. The various actresses Lavant plays against in the appointments are all impressive, whether Eva Mendes’s deadpan model, Kylie Minogue’s former girlfriend, Jeanne Disson’s daughter, or Elise Lhomeau’s niece. Michel Piccoli makes a welcome appearance, too.
“There’s no denying that HOLY MOTORS is a rich film; Carax packs quite a bit into its two hours. That richness isn’t necessarily satisfying, though; much of the time, it’s too obviously metaphorical despite having little interesting to say about anything but itself. 3 cats
“Seen 6 November 2012 in Landmark Kendall Square #8 (first-run, digital)”
Thom says: “HOLY MOTORS, a brilliant fever-dream of a film that never fails to fascinate and elude the viewer. The film with a man being picked-up from his home in a limousine driven by the very elegant Edith Scob. She proceeds to drive our protagonist from scene to scene where he re-invents himself into another being and acts out a scene that often seems intuitive if not downright nonsensical. Many of the scenes had a Pirandello quality and while many of the visions are lifted from other sources they all are so artfully done that they raise the stakes to great heights. It took me over half-way through the film for me to realize the story couldn’t possibly be taking place on Earth. From then on out I was delighted. The cast is quite bizarre including Kylie Minogue, Eva Mendez, Edith Scob, Michel Piccoli, and the amazing Denis Lavant who you’ll remember from his great turn in BEAU TREVAIL. here he’s a man of a million faces. I can’t wait to see this again. Director Leos Carax had a rough start for me with his 1991 film THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE but POLA X (1999) was a classic & who can forget his segment in TOKYO! ‘MERDE’. With another film of this quality he will be on the verge of a huge raise in estimation. Dare I say TOP 10 LIVING DIRECTORS? 5 cats”
Toni says: “I agree with Jay here…I can see where people would love this him and also where others might hate this film. If there was a makeup award, this would win hands down for each of Oscar’s transitions for this ‘appointments’. It is certainly a midnight movie experience; I just wish there was more behind the surreal vignettes that brought it all together. 3 cats”