Holy Motors

"...for the beauty of the act" 

2012
Director/Writer: Leos Carax 
Cast: Denis Lavant, Edith Scobb, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue  

The first film from the French director in over 13 years, Holy Motors is innovative, original and all-out bonkers.  

We follow a day in the life of the mysterious Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) as he travels around Paris in a white limousine for a series of appointments, each requiring a different character transformation. Whether it be a begging old woman, an over-protective father or a dying man, Carax offers no explanations. 

From the beginning clips of the birth of cinema and 

shots of the director himself wondering into a movie theatre, with a boarhound I might add (you get used to unexplained occurrences...), Holy Motors is filled with abundant film references, particularly to French cinema. Kylie Minogue is a tribute to Jean Seberg, Godard’s heroine in the classic New Wave film Breathless and Edith Scobb as Oscar’s chauffer Céline embodies her own character in Eyes Without A Face (keep getting reminded of that film...) when she puts on the very mask from the 1960 horror. Don’t worry, though, Carax slips in a possible reference to the Pixar hit Cars to appeal to the wider audience. 

The style of this film is its best feature as the cinematography are effects often spellbinding: a motion capture suit leaping around a room, the camera swiftly panning around a graveyard, the streets of Paris slowly acquiring a green glow. The music is perfectly paired with scenes and the lyrics of  Minogue’s song (“Who were we? Who were we? When we were who we were back then?”) add to the intrigue and enigma of her character and relationship with one of Oscar’s many identities. 

Many scenes are void of much dialogue but it is the thought-provoking discourses between an alarmingly stern father and his daughter, Oscar and his supposed employer and a dying man and his niece that the film has its most poignant moments. The curiosity that comes with the film’s first half is partly lost during later scenes but Lavant’s brilliant performance of each and every character is so compelling that you cannot switch off. 

It cannot be denied, though, Holy Motors is one strange film. It is perhaps too strange for the average cinema-goer who may not understand the numerous cinematic references and is used to a traditional film structure with explanations of a mysterious plot. Many scenes are shocking, the flower/hair eating fiend that is Monsieur Merde’s (revived from Tokyo) segment is particularly so as he takes the supermodel Kay M (Mendes) into his lair; its peculiarity and lengthy nature easily alienating some viewers. 

Make what you wish of Oscar’s transformations but it is evident that Carax does not want you to over-think this film. You need to forget the conventions of realist dramas and just be transported on this bizarre journey, realising that your questions may never be answered. There is one thing for certain, though: you won’t see another film like it this year.

Les Yeux Sans Visage

Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face) 

1960
Director: Georges Franju

As part of my French film module this year, we are required to study a range of French cinema, including Georges Franju's "Les Yeux Sans Visage". As we studied Les Diaboliques et Godard's new wave masterpiece Breathless last year, I was expecting to discover another classic French gem. In short, I did not.

Acclaimed plastic surgeon, Docteur Génessier, aims to revive the beauty of his disfigured daughter's face by performing radical surgery on a number of young women, kidnapped by his wife. They are brought to a desolate grand building where ominous lighting creates an atmosphere of imprisonment and mistrust as you are initially unsure whether to pity or despise the Génessier family. This eeriness and sense of entrapment, initially created with a proficient right dolly in the opening sequence, are perhaps the only parts of the film I found impressive.

The film is often praised for its tense and haunting nature and though its subject matter is admittedly shocking, the dénouement lacked true progression and the film felt overworked and predictable of the genre. Its old-fashioned air could simply be justified with the fact it was made over 50 years ago, but so was Hitchcock's Psycho, a work that still remains a masterful example of the horror genre that fails to age. Here, we are overloaded with genre conventions; a close-up of a ringing phone, voiceovers as we are introduced to a line-up at a funeral, intensified sounds and melodramatic music. Also, it seems that Franju thought dissolves were the only ways to change scenes.

Many critics have also praised this piece for its visual poetry. You may call the masked Christianne prancing out of the prison that is her home, releasing doves into the air as her father's face also becomes disfigured poetic, I found it tiresome.