On stumbling out of Holy Motors, my head was full of questions. Not least of which was ˜how do I write a review of this?’ Director Leos Carax has eschewed traditional review fodder, such as structure, character development and suchlike, making it tricky to know what to write about. So, by way of review, here are a few of the questions that were rolling around my addled brain throughout and after the film. (A word of warning “ a few of these questions could be argued to be plot spoilers. But if you can work out the plot of Holy Motors, you’ve done better than me).
- What’s with the guy at the start of Holy Motors with the key built into his hand?
- So, M. Oscar (Denis Lavant) is playing some sort of banker travelling round in a limousine “ is this going to be like Cosmopolis?
- M. Oscar has now made himself up to appear like a hunchbacked old woman and is begging for change “ actually this isn’t going to be like Cosmopolis is it?
- Why is M. Oscar a different person whenever he steps out of the limousine?
- Does he believe he is these characters or is he playing a role every time he steps out of the car?
- Who is providing the dossiers that tell him who he is going to be and what he is going to do at each appointment?
- Who are the ˜viewers’ they keep talking about? Are these scenarios being played out for someone’s viewing pleasure?
- Are other characters playing roles, or do they believe it’s all real?
- Why isn’t Kay (Eva Mendes) protesting more about being kidnapped?
- Who convinced Eva Mendes that this was a good idea?
- Is M. Oscar so committed to his roles that he dyes his pubic hair to match the hair colour of the character he’s playing? Or does he only do this when his character is likely to get naked?
- Is this actually all about the evolution of cinema and a critique of the changing methods used?
- Why is he eating those flowers?
- Is it me, or is this getting more and more interesting as it goes along?
- Is he going to wake up at the end and it’s all been a dream? That had better not happen.
- Who put up the 3.9 million Euros needed to fund this? And who greenlit it?
- Shouldn’t that have been fatal?
- Why, when it looked like an explanation was about to happen, did we instead get Kylie Minogue singing?
- Will there be more singing? I didn’t really like it.
- Monkeys?
- This isn’t going to be neatly tied up at the end is it?
It wasn’t tied up neatly at the end. And that was just a sample of the film’s sprawling oddness. As you may have come to suspect, Holy Motors is baffling, frustrating, exasperating. But it’s never boring. In a cinematic landscape so imaginatively barren that Casbalanca 2 is a genuine possibility, a remake of Flight of the Navigator is in the pipeline and Transformers 4 is a guaranteed huge hit before it’s even been shot, it seems almost a gift that a film as bizarre as Holy Motors could even exist. While by no means perfect, a film this exuberant and with so much energy and disheveled imagination, that completely refuses to conform to any kind of recognised blueprint for commercial success, all the while keeping you captivated (even through the not so great bits), is cause for celebration.
Dave Rogers
Holy Motors: Ranked 8th in Top 30 Films of 2012