Holy Fucking Motors

Holy Motors (2012) was recommended by Dennis Cozzallo, who considered it his top film of 2012. Well, I guess.

It starts with a man (the director Leos Carax) waking up, and finding a door in the wallpaper of his room. This leads to a movie theater. Then Denis Levant gets into a limousine and begins putting on make-up as his driver, Edith Scob, takes him to his first assignment. Dressed as a ragged old woman, he stands on a street corner and begs. Then he gets back into the limo. His next assignment is to wear a motion capture suit and fight with, then have sex with, a woman in another suit. And so on.

Each assignment is completely different - some bizarre, some naturalistic. Some even seem like they may be his real life. In some he kills people, people who look like him. In some, he is killed. But he always comes back to the limo.

After one assignment, his agent is in the car, worried that Levant is getting tired. Levant says he misses the days when you could see the cameras. There’s an explanation for all this - he is an actor, playing a series of roles in futuristic movies. It’s just that the cameras and crews are no longer visible.  But that becomes untenable when his last assignment it to go “home” to his “wife” and “daughter”, who he has never met before. And are chimpanzees.

It ends with the limo returning to the Holy Motors garage with all the other limos. As the chauffeurs go home, the limos discuss their days.

This is obviously a surreal exercise in writing and a bravura performance from Levant. Parts are funny, and it all seems to be full of depth and meaning. But a lot of the performances are creepy and/or unpleasant. One of the longest has a filthy man grunting and biting peoples fingers off, and carrying off a beautiful woman. It’s just kind of gross.

So I guess this wasn’t really for me. Too bad, since Carax has made a number of other interesting looking movies. I’ll be skipping them.