When audiences walk out of Holy Motors, they may echo the
words of a photographer who ecstatically snaps pictures of a strange
goblin-like creature in one of the film's many bizarre sequences – "So
weird...so weird." Holy Motors is weird, there's no doubt about that. Before
making this film, Leos Carax hadn't directed a feature in 13 years, and at
times it feels like he has simply poured every idea, fantasy, dream and
nightmare he had in that period into a single extraordinary picture. One of
those ideas will be familiar to anyone who saw Carax's contribution to the
portmanteau film Tokyo! in 2008, as Holy Motors reprises the sewer-dwelling,
flower-eating, armpit-licking Monsieur Merde from that anarchic short. This
time, however, Monsieur Merde is just one of many elaborate characters performed
by Denis Lavant.
Lavant plays Monsieur Oscar, who is a
businessman of apparently some importance, and we first see him settling into a limousine and
looking at the heavy schedule of appointments he has ahead of him. When he
emerges, however, he is no longer dressed in a suit. Instead, he is in the
guise of an old beggar woman; stooped over, shabbily dressed, with one arm
extended as she beseeches pedestrians for some spare change. In Holy Motors,
Lavant adopts a series of disguises and immerses himself into these extremely
varied roles. The inside of the limousine is decked out to resemble an actor's
dressing room, but for what purpose? For what audience is Monsieur Oscar going
to this effort? We never really find out, and I'm not sure if that matters
anyway.
Perhaps Holy Motors is Carax's meditation on the nature of
performance, or a metaphor for the way we all wear masks and present ourselves
differently in different situations in our own lives. It's hard to get a fix on
Holy Motors because it keeps wriggling away and reinventing itself every few
minutes. Just when we have recovered from the shock of seeing Monsieur Merde
kidnap a fashion model (a very game Eva Mendes), the film presents us with a
father-daughter scene that is very touching in the natural honesty of its
emotions. A strange motion-capture scene segues into an even stranger sexually charged
CGI sequence, while a segment in which Monsieur Oscar attempts to assassinate
his doppelganger develops towards an amusing and very clever punchline. There's
even a musical interlude, which may be my single favourite moment in this year
of cinema.
Inevitably, the film is episodic and some of these vignettes
work better than others (the deathbed scene is a weak link), but such missteps
are rare. Towards the end of the film, Carax deals another surprise, with Kylie
Minogue turning in a surprisingly effective and affecting cameo as another of
these mysterious performers, who shares some unspoken link with Monsieur Oscar.
In fact, all of the actors cast in the film manage to make a memorable impact
despite the mysterious nature of their characters: Michel Piccoli pops up in
the limo to offer words of advice to the jaded actor; Edith Sciob is the driver
tasked with transporting Monsieur Oscar around town all day (she also sparks
one of the film's more on-the-nose cinematic references); and the director
himself kicks things off by appearing in the opening scene. He plays a man who
wakes in a strange room and finds a portal in the wall that leads to a darkened
cinema, where an audience is transfixed by the bright screen. The link between
cinema and dreams made explicit right at the start of his remarkable film.
But Holy Motors is Denis Lavant's film, and he seizes his multiple roles
with breathtaking skill and conviction. Not since Beau Travail in 1999 has the
actor been granted a role that takes advantage of his unique physicality in
such a thrilling manner. Carax has said that if Lavant turned down this role he
would have "offered the part to Lon Chaney or to Chaplin. Or to Peter
Lorre or Michel Simon." Like their great iconic roles, it's easy to see
Lavant's staggering multiple performances here going down as one for the ages.
Like the film around him, the actor is exhilaratingly fearless, boundlessly
imaginative and, of course, "So weird...so weird."