Leos Carax
Holy Motors is not simply a postmodernism film: rather, it's a film about postmodernism. Shatters the identity of the protagonist through a prism of mirrors, masks and camouflages. A liquid and mutant ego that, we cannot hope to understand: because the world has (become) chaos, because the logic fails. A deconstructive film that shows itself in its continuous making and undoing. Timeless and asthorical is composed of first-rate visual and actor material.
Denis Lavant, the actors-fetish par excellence of Leos Carax, in the role of Oscar is taken on board a luxurious limousine through the streets of Paris - like a baudelairian albatros- by Céline (Edith Scob). Oscar takes on different identities and connotations, constantly caressing the surface of things. A movie, like its protagonist, essentially plural. In Holy Motors, as in the postmodern, we pass from universality to institutionalized pluralism; from homogeneity to variety; from monotony to contingency; from clarity to ambivalence; from order to case. A journey on contemporary cinema, on himself and his films.
Oscar leads his life of eternal interpreter with tragic abnegation and solemnity, whatever the part to be recited, from the gypsy who asks alms or the monster that lives in the basement, to the role of the murderer. As in a singular cycle of rebirths, the protagonist dives desperately into the following role, in search of peace, of the last interpretation and of the curtain that finally falls. To beat on the same point does not mean to be dull, but to insist on what one believes, Carax does not change to make the market or new viewers happy, it remains on its mind no matter what, even if it means remaining silent for years. An absurd oddity like no other.
Holy Motors
director LEOS CARAX
year 2012
director of photography CAROLINE CHAMPETIER
cast DENIS LAVANT, EDITH SCOB, EVA MENDES, KYLIE MINOGUE, MICHEL PICCOLI, LEOS CARAX.
words SILVIA GAIA MARCELLI
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