Holy Motors

... Um... Er... Uh......... Merde. Ben, je pouvais ecriver la revue en francais, mais I really can't be bothered and I've pretty much exhausted whatever high school French I had left in me. If you hadn't guessed, this is a French film from director Leos Carax and I have no idea where to begin with this one. I mean it. On the poster it says "One of the most original films of the century", and I'm very inclined to agree. I don't think anything like this will ever come again. The only way I can describe watching it is like watching a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film on acid whilst being repeatedly hit over the head with the Beatles' "Revolution No. 9". Your head hurts after and you have no idea what you just say through.  

Holy Motors follows one day in the life of M. Oscar (Denis Lavant) as he is chauffered around Paris in a white limousine by his driver Celine (Edith Scob). We see him going to his different appointments during the day and way into the night. The appointments are tied together through the conversations and interactions of M. Oscar and Celine as they drive to the next appointment. Because of that, it feels like lots of little short vignettes joined together loosely forming one incoherent whole. Though it soon becomes clear that Oscar's busy schedule is draining him and he is slowly loosing his will to carry on. Some of his appointments include kidnapping a doll-like model (Eva Mendes), going into a motion-capture room, picking up his 'daughter' and playing a dying uncle with another associate.

Since I have nowhere else to start, I will begin with the acting. I haven't seen Denis Lavant in anything before, though I know that he has been in all but one of Carax's films previous to this one. This has to be the best performance of the year. Lavant doesn't just play Oscar playing other characters, he plays 11 different, fully fleshed characters (or as fully fleshed as they can be given the time) and yet is still able to show us that he is slowly losing himself with every new role that he takes on, and it becomes apparent that he is living his life through other people. He has been doing his job (which is never fully explained) for so long that he is starting to lose not only his motivation, but whatever part of himself is left. The other actors are good, especially Edith Scob as Celine, Eva Mendes as Kay M and rather surprisingly Kylie Minogue as a former aquaintance/lover of Oscar's.

Visually, this looks pretty amazing. Paris looks fabulous at night, and we see some back streets and landmarks that you don't usually see when someone films in Paris. But the cinematography is especially great in the motion-capture scene as it shifts between normal and slow motion so seemlessly. The music is also good, when it's there, as the film mainly uses a natural soundtrack, and every song used is used for a specific purpose (though I do guarantee that Kylie Minogue's song will get stuck in you head for ages after). In fact, my favourite part of the film might well be the intermission because of the great accordion break down!

But that's the thing with this film. Because of the vignettey style it's hard to look at this as a whole, at least for me it is. I'm not going to pretend for a minute that I know what this film is trying to say, like some other critics have, littering their reviews with stupid phrases like "I can't tell you what is going on because then it would spoil your viewing of it". I don't know what is going on (well, I do in a story sense, but not a thematic sense), but instead I will give two theories that may be right, but probably aren't, in order to shed some light on the film.

The first is what I thought while watching the film in the cinema, and that is that all these appointments are for an unseen audience that can only experience life through those who work for the company Holy Motors, those like Oscar. This come through the opening scene of a cinema audience watching a movie (and I will say that it is very disconcerting to watch an audience watching you watching them... try and put your head around that one), and also through a conversation with Oscar's boss, who says that he is losing his touch, obviously referring to his acting. Also, Oscar is portrayed as a never dying being, who seems to be put through these bizarre scenarios for someones perverse pleasure. And some of them really are perverted, especially the one with Eva Mendes as supermodel Kay M, who is kidnapped by a disgusting sewer creature.

The other theory, which was brought forward during my film groups discussion, is that this could all be a dream. And it really could be. This is a very surreal film, with none of the parts connecting except for oscar, yet each part tells a distinct story in itself. The dream theory is very probable and not just a way of admitting that I don't really know what it all means (I already told you that). For what if Oscar was having trouble at work, it might explain his stabbing scene. Or what if he's having trouble communicating with his daughter, that would explain her scene in the car. Or what if, a million other what ifs! I'm inclined to believe the dream theory, along with Carax himself has said about the film.

Leos Carax is behaving a little like David Lynch in that he isn't explaining anything about the movie, and when he does they are pretty cryptic. But he did say something that caught my attention: "You could say that Monsieur Oscar (played by Denis Lavant) is an actor, but it’s not a film about actors. It’s a film about a man and an experience: the experience of being alive. I used the fact that he might be a actor or a kind of actor that no one is watching: a little like all of us." While it doesn't really tell us that much more, to me it gives the film more of an autobiographical feel. Like he was trying to recreate scenes from his own life that he wished could've gone better, while also putting these surreal fantasies in there as well, that were maybe drawn from dreams he had. This is enforced by a number of things; the fact that he has a cameo as a man who finds a secret door that leads to a movie theatre, and that Oscar and one of his alias', Alex, is an anagram of Leos Carax. And if this is just a mad dream that Carax is having, then it explains all of the references to other movies that you can find in this.

Oh yeah, there are references to other movies in this. But you may not get them, I only got one. The good thing is it doesn't mean that you lose anything if you don't get them. This is a critics movie, so if you find that if you go and see it and get annoyed at reviews for calling it a masterpiece when to you it is a just mess, don't worry. This seems to be the Eyes Wide Shut of Cannes this year, but executed way better and not nearly as frustrating. Would I recommend this? Well, no, unless you were wanting to see it anyway. If you want to see it then do, I'll bet you won't have seen anything like it. But if this doesn't sound like your kind of thing, then it probably isn't. I'm still not sure if I actually like this. As I said before, there are parts I like, but as a whole I'm incredibly ambivalent. It would probably benefit from repeat veiwings, so I may borrow it when it comes out. I will say this for it though, it was so much better than Cosmopolis. Until next time, readers, in which we enter the indie circuit.