In 2012, French director Leos Carax made his first movie in 13 years. It wasn’t for lack of trying; he had on numerous occasions tried to get one or another project off the ground, but failed due to a lack of cash or problems with casting. Now he decided to use his disparate ideas in one movie and he set up a few rules for himself: it had to be inexpensive, shot in France and written for one specific actor.
The final results premiered in Cannes, wowed critics and ended up on many best-of lists that year. Personally, I find it impossible to love, but perhaps I’m using my brain a little too much?
Nine appointments in one day
There is no story here, but a series of vignettes, starting with a morning in Paris where a chauffeur, Céline (Édith Scob), Mr. Oscar (Denis Lavant) in a white stretch limo. He’s a wealthy man who says goodbye to his family and gets into the car, ready to start his day. He has nine appointments. In the limousine he prepares by getting dressed up and putting on makeup. Mr. Oscar’s first appointment has him appearing as an old beggar woman shuffling around on the Pont Alexandre III. His second one has him donning a motion-capture suit and acting out action sequences on an empty sound stage. There will be many other strange appointments throughout the day.
Picturing limos as vessels
In many reviews of the film, critics do their best to interpret the meaning of these vignettes. Your take will be as good as anyone’s. The white limo does play an important part. The sight of them inspired Carax who found the cars tacky and outdated. He started picturing them as vessels carrying humans to their final assignments, man and machine slaves in an increasingly virtual world. This may not seem obvious when you’re watching the movie, because the vignettes differ so much from one another. Some of them are very entertaining, such as an interlude featuring Oscar and a group of musicians playing accordions in a church; others feel more or less pointless, such as a scene where Oscar is a dad giving his teenage daughter grief for not socializing enough at a party. There’s another vignette near the end where Oscar meets a woman he knows, played by Kylie Minogue. Considering the fact that they seem to share a past and that Minogue gets to sing about them once having a child, the scene seems like one of the film’s most important, but the emotions are not there. Message and motivation are much too vague to demand a profound reaction from us.
We never know what Leos Carax has up his sleeve next.
The things about Holy Motors that we admire and engage with are more superficial, people and events to behold. They include a constant unpredictability; we never know what Carax has up his sleeve next. There’s also Lavant who gets to play many roles in one movie and never holds back, including a scene where he plays the monstrous Monsieur Merde who kidnaps a model and brings her down in the sewers. Carax has said that the only other actors he would consider for the role are people like Lon Chaney and Charlie Chaplin; this is indeed a physical performance of that type.
Perhaps best viewed as a symbol of how we step in and out of different roles throughout life, Holy Motors doesn’t really explore that theme, but has its irresistibly cinematic moments.
Holy Motors 2012-France-Germany. 116 min. Color. Written and directed by Leos Carax. Cast: Denis Lavant (Mr. Oscar), Édith Scob (Céline), Eva Mendes (Kay M.), Kylie Minogue, Élise L’Homeau, Jeanne Disson, Michel Piccoli, Leos Carax.
Trivia: Carax reportedly first offered Juliette Binoche the character that Minogue came to play, but she declined. Monsieur Merde first appeared in the anthology film Tokyo! (2008).
