"Holy Motors" Review

"Holy Motors"

Directed by Leos Carax

Starring Denis Lavant, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue, Edith Scob, Leos Carax

 

RATING

8/10

 

Welcome to a world of insanity, where the twisted, mad, bonkers, crazy, unexpected, inexplicable, incomprehensible, and unidentifiable happens. A world where actors seek the thrill of living different lives, and experiencing the nuances of life one small piece at a time. A world where Eva Mendes nearly gets raped in a cave by a monstrous leprechaun, where elderly fathers on their death beds walk out of their rooms to appointments, where motion capture actors perform flinching sexual acts, where limo's talk to each other, and where duplicates of people roam freely around the streets. Of course, I'm talking about "Holy Motors".

 

The strange tale begins when Mr. Oscar, a seemingly well-dressed businessman waves his wife and kids goodbye and jumps into a limo, off to an appointment. He converses with his limo driver, has a nice breakfast, and picks up briefing reports. Just a simple day, right?... Oh, no. We witness his limo in its entirely: a dressing room filled with costumes and make-up kits. And his job? Acting, only life is his endless stage. And his range of characters are just as bizarre.

 

In my movie-watching years rooting all the way back to when I was a wee lad, about a year old, I have seen plenty of wonderous and crazy films. "Being John Malkovich" first introduced me to this surrealist film style, and since then these movies have gotten progressively weirder. Well, perhaps David Lynch's mindbending work before then had stolen the spotlight, but at the time, the modern French cinema scene was opening up to me, and the masters of mise-en-scene came forward. Michel Gondry, possibly my favorite, directed "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", one of the strangest and most unorthodox films ever made. Then a little-known French director, Leos Carax, came along with this piece of work and made Gondry's film look like a 2-piece puzzle. "Holy Motors" is, undeniably, one of the most puzzling and downright outlandish films to ever be produced this decade. Even attempting to explain the plot is confusing me. I'm not really sure there is a plot. Or maybe there was, and I missed a part. Hell, I don't even know what to think. By traditional standards, it's a pretty stunning-looking film. It all happens in a span of around 12-hours, so it's fast pace won't leave you bored much, and the new and inventive characters conjured by Mr. Oscar always has you anticipating his next role. Some of the sequences, such as the motion capture work, is extraordinarily hypnotic and mysteriously engrossing despite its quite graphic and sexual nature. It always borders on the "artsy", but manages to pull away and become something else entirely.

 

There is, however, one scene in particular in the middle that does hurt this film's wonderous pacing and clever style. It almost dimishes the entire innovative fun of the film in exchange for a heart-warming and sad (sort of) scene involving a dying father (the daughter, by the way, is extremely hot. Just saying.). It's slow and timid, and you'll be wishing to leap back into the swing of things a bit more. However, it does leap back... straight into a musical. As you might've guessed, I'm not a big fan of musicals, but Kylie Minogue has a good voice, and the song actually isn't that bad. But when you think about it, these sequence of events feel a bit off amidst the insanity happening around it. It's a couple road blocks in an otherwise wildly entertaining pacing.

 

"Holy Motors" gets huge points for being the craziest, most weird film of the last twelve years. It's very ambitious on concept, and relies heavily on its surprise element to push it along. Some might find this tedious, I personally found it very refreshing and absorbing. Beneath the grime and underbelly of Paris lies an actor's playground, and it will make you feel like a kid again. A kid with severe brain damage, more accurately.