Directed by: Leos Caraxe
Starring: Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes, and Kylie Minogue
Plot: One man takes on many identities over the course of the night.
Review:
Holy Motors is a wild fucking ride, that’s for sure.
It follows the adventures of Mr. Oscar, a very enigmatic man. He wakes up as a rich man on his way to work. He gets inside a limo driven by his assistant. She mentions to him that he has many appointments, and that the file for the first one is lying on the seat next to him. He examines it for about a minute and then proceeds to change his appearance. He comes out of the limo dressed as a beggar woman and panhandles on the street for a while. He is then a weirdo strolling through a cemetery, a disgruntled father picking up his daughter, an assassin going after a man who looks just like him, an accordion player, and all manner of different characters.
Mr. Oscar moves from appointment to appointment taking on these different roles as if he was prostituting himself out to give those hiring him a strange life experience; the kind you could only ever imagine would appear in a movie. These people are getting the exact emotional reaction they want and/or need from the experiences he crafts for them. But it is more than that. A small conversation with a stereotypical looking movie exec seems to reveal that he is in fact being recorded by devices too small to even see. It is as if he is on some strange television network going from role to role satisfying the audience who may or may not be watching him. It is really hard to tell what it going on because it is so cryptic, so much so that it borders on alienating.
Luckily, its absurdity does not stop it from being engaging. Denis Lavant in the role of Mr. Oscar gets to flex every acting muscle in his body, and in a sense, gave not just one of the best performances of the year, but 11. His strongest scenes being his retreats to his limo where he can shed his costumes and breathe a sigh of relief before going on to his next appointment. Each appointment is like its own small absurd movie. There are real emotions at the center of each small story. Each one has its own pace, tone, and genre. It is one of those unique films that come around every once in a while and shows us what cinema is truly capable of.
It then goes on to posit, at least I think it does, that “cinema” has grown out of the Cineplex. The big dark rooms full of strangers sharing the same screen may be getting put out to pasture by constantly evolving technology, but the artistic integrity at the core of cinema is worth saving no matter where it is expressed or experienced.
Holy Motors is not an easily palatable movie. It demands your attention and threatens to lose it at the same time, but if you can somehow make it to the end, I think you will find it is ultimately a thrilling ride that is worth the confusion.
Rating: 8/10
