Monday, December 31, 2012

9. Holy Motors


Directed by Leos Carax’s.  It is crazy, weird story of an illogical limo-ride through Paris. Films are always getting described as surreal, whether they are or not. But this year we saw a genuinely surrealist movie. Holy Motors is unaffected by logic and common sense; it takes off in all directions, inspired by Cocteau, Lynch, Buñuel, Muybridge, Kafka, and many more.
It's a kind of road movie. Monsieur Oscar is an enigmatic businessman, played by Denis Lavnt being carried around Paris in the back of a white limousine, driven by Céline, played by Edith Scob. He has a number of mysterious appointments, for each of which he has to apply a new and elaborate disguise. But what on earth are these appointments?
In the course of each, he seems to enter a different or parallel universe in which his persona is unquestioningly accepted. He is an angry father, a homeless bag lady, an assassin and even a motion-capture studio model whose acrobatics create a weird and wonderful erotic animation which we are permitted to see and which doesn't seem any more or less real than everything that comes before or after. Some other actors in the film are Eva Mendes and a cameo by Kylie Monogue. And what is the point of this film? Its point is to dunk us in a delicious bath of unreason, to create pleasure. And having achieved that, its purpose is to meditate – capriciously, playfully – on the role-play we all have to master on our limo-ride through life.


No comments:

Post a Comment