A sleeping man – the director himself – awakens from his dreams to discover a cinema opening as a mysterious Wonderland on the other side of the wall. Elsewhere, a wealthy Parisian (Denis Lavant) leaves for work in a white luxury car. Nine highly unusual meetings are scheduled, each involving adopting the guise of a new character…
The masterful Lavant pays homage to virtuosos like Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers in almost a dozen roles, and the loquacious limousine acting as his dressing room – i.e. his wardrobe to Narnia – glides through the pale streets of the city chauffeured by Édith Scob, almost resembling Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage. A ghost story filled with masks and masquerades, even political punches, represents a Cocteau-like wandering within the film. We proceed within the indistinct structures of fact and fiction, among which even the doppelgänger of Jean Seberg (included in the reference apparatus in Carax’s other works too, interpreted by Kylie Minogue) moves naturally. The ingenious casting of Scob, on the other hand, recalls Georges Franju’s horror classic Eyes Without A Face (1960).
One of the most outstanding cinematic achievements of the current millennium, Holy Motors surprises with its transitions, touches with its powerful emotions, dazzles with its effortless skill, and exhilarates with its unique humour. Carax dreams up before us an unrivalled masterpiece!
Lauri Timonen