"Holy Motors" is a Trip

The only exposure I had to the work of French director Leos Carax was "Les Amants du Pont-Neuf," a screwed up little love story about a troubled couple living on the streets of Paris. It had a small budget and a gritty, unvarnished style I found appealing. Carax's latest film, "Holy Motors," is something completely different. It's a big film in every possible sense. In fact, it's one of those grand-scale, audacious filmmaking experiments that exists to deliberately and systematically break many of the usual rules of cinematic storytelling, and uses every filmmaking trick in the book to do it. The term "avant-garde" is an appropriate descriptor here, but unlike many similarly self-conscious, erudite art films, "Holy Motors" is pretty fun to watch too. I freely admit that half the time I had no idea what was going on, but I was still entertained by its constant barrage of wild visuals, energetic storytelling, and intriguing concepts.

The central character is a man identified as Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant), who is driven around town in a white limousine by a chauffeur named Céline (Edith Scob). Oscar has many appointments to keep, constantly referring to a stack of file folders that detail what is required of him at each stop. We're never told exactly what his job is, but it involves using make-up, wigs, and wardrobe changes to assume a series of different roles. At one stop he puts on a motion-capture suit and plays out a love scene, to be converted into a digital performance. At another, he becomes the obscene, bizarre Merde, who Lavant introduced to the world in a previous Carax effort, "Tokyo!" At one of the last stops he runs across a woman played by Kylie Minogue, who he seems to recognize, and perhaps we're finally getting a little insight into who Monsieur Oscar is, and why he's carrying out all these strange assignments. But then the two break out into heartfelt song, like the leads of an old musical, and it seems that in all likelihood they're still playing out parts for someone else's benefit. But whose benefit? And why? What is going on?

Each stop on the trip results in another little vignette, many of them paying homage to other films. "Holy Motors" is full of references, most of them unfamiliar to me, though I did pick out the "Godzilla" music, and Edith Scob briefly reassuming her most celebrated film role, the masked, disfigured Christiane from the horror movie "Eyes Without a Face." Perhaps the whole story is about the act of making movies and delivering performances, and more broadly, the way people take on different roles for different occasions. But that's putting things much too simply. "Holy Motors" may also about voyeurism and identity and social expectations and how it's increasingly hard to say what is real and what is not. Carax gives us no baseline for reality in this universe, and keeps adding more and more elements of absurdity as the film goes on, forcing the audience to keep reevaluating their assumptions and expectations. It's a trick Luis Buñuel used to regularly pull off in his celebrated Surrealist films, like "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," and I was delighted to see it resurrected so beautifully here.

It's extremely difficult to execute a film like "Holy Motors" well, because of all the ambiguity, and all these different levels of commentary and symbolism. The constant leaps from genre to genre, and mood to mood could have resulted in a tonal and narrative mess. However, the pace is quick, no segment goes on longer than it should, and Carax keeps finding ways to surprise. And so, an impromptu musical interlude involving a gang of accordion players doesn't feel out of place. Neither does a touching scene where Monsieur Oscar takes the role of a dying man, sharing his last moments with his loved ones. There are a few places where I felt scenes didn’t work, or I couldn't figure out what Carax was trying convey. The brief appearance by Eva Mendes, for instance, went a bit wrong. However, at no point did "Holy Motors" feel like it was going off the tracks, or that each element wasn't well-considered or without purpose. Many developments felt random and spontaneous, but upon closer inspection, they weren't.

Clearly this is not a film for everyone, but for those who can appreciate the joyful weirdness and anarchic nature of "Holy Motors," it is a fascinating piece of work. I don't think I was so engaged or bewildered by another movie from last year. Sometimes it's nice to get away from logic and rationality, and it’s good to remember that film is a medium that allows for that. I'm still puzzling out many pieces of "Holy Motors," but it's a state of confusion I can enjoy.
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