Holy Motors

2012 experience

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Oscar is whisked around in a large limousine as he changes character and keeps assignments. 

I know I've mentioned this before, but my favorite movies are ones that I don't fully understand or ones that I'm not sure I understand. I knew enough about this movie going in that this would be that type of movie, and since I really have to be in a certain mood and be wearing the correct pants to make it through a movie like this, I kept putting it off. Well, until I saw it and wrote about it on the blog and somehow inspired my friend Rubber Duck to check it out. This is bizarre, probably by anybody's standards, but I really felt, after making it through the nearly-two-hour film and honestly feeling a little worn out afterward, that I had a pretty good grasp on what this is all about. And then it bounced around in my head a lot more, and I convinced myself that it was about something else. The main character, played by Denis Lavant who was in Tuvalu, a movie I really liked and would recommend for people who like quirky art and/or silent movies, plays around ten different "characters," and it's never clear whether any of them are actually supposed to be the real Oscar although there's one in the middle that very well might be and one at the end that could possibly be. Oh, and another in the middle who gets to hang out with Kylie Minogue, an Australian pop artist who I've heard has a lovely posterior, might very well be the real him, too. Anyway, he's playing roles, and this movie could be about the roles that all of us regular people are forced to play to get through our lives. We have to be violent, we have to be lovers, we have to be spiritual, we have to be parents, we have to be victims, and we have to be needy. A fantastic two-and-a-half-word final line to his surprising family in a last scene intrigues, and there's also a line he says to his daughter that just has to be a key to solving this riddle of a movie. "Your punishment is to be yourself." Or, this could be a movie all about the film industry and the way actors play these different roles, the demands placed upon them by their audience, and maybe how it's all a dying craft. Minogue's character asks at one point, "And if there's no beholder?" and during a surprising musical number (this movie's full of surprises) sings, "Who were we when we were who we were back then?" which fits in thematically with the idea of playing roles and also has nine W-words in a row. So what's this about? Actual people or actual people playing actual people? Or maybe both of those are far too simplistic, and I'm just a dumb guy easily amused by things he hasn't seen before. This has plenty of that and is unlike any movie I've ever seen. I really want you to see it and be as surprised and surprised again as I was, so I'll keep specifics out of this, but the opener with a guy with a tool for a finger, boat sounds, and a secret door in the wall opening into an opera house with zombie people, some dogs, and a naked kid hooked me right away and my eyes stayed wide open during contortionist sex in motion capture suits with squeaking leather and a truly grotesque ending, some flower eating, a crime, a second crime, and a bunch of other stuff. And there's an interlude featuring more accordions than I think I've ever seen in a movie that blew me away. So good! Anyway, I've said too much already. Denis Lavant is brilliant as Oscar and all the other characters he's playing, and I realize that there's a lot of make-up and costuming being used to transform him into all these different roles, but I'd like to see another actor take all this on and do it as effectively. Edith Scob from Eyes without a Face drives him around, and Eva Mendes also has a memorable role. The movie's frequently funny, sometimes almost profoundly sad, and always mesmerizing. I loved it despite not being 100% sure what I thought of a goofy ending in the titular place of business. It's a challenge for sure, but it's great fun for adventurous movie lovers.