Leos Carax lets a film change character with its actors, and the results can be funny and unexpectedly moving. We warmly recommend Holy Motors, with reservations about lingering episodes and the smaller freedoms allowed to its women.
Fi1m perspective
In Holy Motors (2012), Denis Lavant can be a banker, a beggar or a father, and Leos Carax lets the film change with him. Each character gets a separate episode, with little obligation to behave like the one before. We like Carax most when that freedom produces a surprise worth sitting through, rather than another variation on an idea we have already understood. Here, it usually does.
The early films grew out of his partnership with Lavant and cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier: Boy Meets Girl (1984), Mauvais Sang (1986) and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991). The physical performance and romantic intensity of Mauvais Sang remain useful guides to his interests. After a long gap, Pola X (1999) brought a more austere tone. The later work keeps changing form, from the separate encounters of Holy Motors to Annette (2021), an English-language musical made with Sparks.
Nelly Quettier’s editing is crucial to Holy Motors: the changes of genre arrive abruptly, yet the next episode often catches our attention before we have finished questioning the last. The pacing within those episodes is less reliable, because Carax sometimes stays after the joke or situation has become clear. We can admire the willingness to try something new and still wish he would move on sooner.
We grinned at the accordion passage, because the noisy collective playing makes watching people do something together a sufficient pleasure. Neil Hannon’s musical contribution allows Holy Motors to be openly sad without setting us another puzzle. These moments matter: Carax can make the repeated changes of identity tiring, but here he gives us time to enjoy the people performing them.
His attention is unevenly shared. Édith Scob, Eva Mendes and Kylie Minogue make an impression in Holy Motors, but none gets Lavant’s freedom to keep changing, and the encounters suffer for it. We are left with a richer sense of his leading man’s experience than of the women around him. Start with this film for Lavant and the music, and allow Carax a few detours that last longer than they should.
Biography
Leos Carax is a French film director, screenwriter, critic and actor. Born Alex Christophe Dupont on 22 November 1960 in Suresnes, he began making short films in the early 1980s and made his feature debut with Boy Meets Girl (1984).
His subsequent films include Mauvais Sang (1986), The Lovers on the Bridge (1991), Pola X (1999), Holy Motors (2012) and Annette (2021). He won the Best Director prize at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival for Annette. Carax has frequently collaborated with actor Denis Lavant and appeared in several of his own films, including a credited role in Holy Motors.
