Holy Motors
Director: Leos Carax
Writer: Leos Carax
Cast: Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue

Plot:
Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) spends his way being driven around by Céline (Edith Scob) in a limousine. As they drive from place to place, Oscar uses elaborate make-up to move from role to role and at each new location he plays a different, unusual and surreal part. But who does he play these parts for?

Holy Motors is a weird film, but not necessarily worse off for it. It is quite entertaining in its abstract surreality, even if it does go on a little too long.

I can’t even pretend to have understood what was going on in this film. I’m not sure that anyone can, including Leos Carax. But that’s also exactly why the movie works – the constant blurring of reality and performance that keeps you guessing at what is actually going on is quite engaging.

Admittedly though, the movie did have its lengths around the middle. And the ending (where the limousines start talking to each other) was just one step too far for my taste. And it just took away from the sense of realism that, despite all weirdness, was still always present in the movie until then.

The cast was excellent. Denis Lavant’s performance, aided by the great make-up, was simply astonishing. But as his character keeps changing and transforming, Edith Scob’s Céline is the consistent and steady counterpoint and she’s just as wonderful.

Holy Motors is an interesting cinematic project everybody can pretty much make their own story of and decide to which degree they take it literally. That amount of interpretative liberty is quite unusual and probably won’t be to everyone’s taste. But I quite enjoyed it.

Summarising: interesting and a little mind-fucky in a pretty good combination.