In Leos Carax’s befuddling, beautiful
all-the-world’s-a-stage revue Holy Motors,
the incomparable Denis Lavant plays a very peculiar sort of everyman. Monsieur
Oscar is seemingly an actor who’s been kicked upstairs — he doesn’t work in the
confines of a stage or a set (with one weird exception), but takes appointments
out in the real* world, interacting with others who may or may not also be
actors. (In one episode of Sellars-ian multiple casting, he has a fatal
encounter with an individual who may or may not also be him.)
Motors certainly
doesn’t hide its basic philosophical investigation, but it goes well beyond a
metafictional exploration of performance, constantly fascinated with technology
and setting and modes of perception or observation. I’ve been mulling over Holy Motors for three weeks, trying to
parse it or at least find a good angle for attack. Without the benefit of
repeat viewings, I can’t help but feel I’m only scratching the surface. So I’m
going to come at it from every direction — below is a series of brief
considerations on different aspects of the film, I think a fitting approach to
an episodic and many-splendored work of art.
1
Rather promptly if somewhat obliquely, we are introduced to
Oscar’s profession — he rides around in a limousine converted into a dressing
room. There’s a mirror framed with bright bulbs, and everything he needs to
transform himself bodily for each successive appointment. He can become an old
lady, a spry acrobatic performer, a crass imp, a scarred thug, all with the
application of some makeup. At first, it seems he’s interacting with non-actors
— “real people” — but the lines are blurry from the start.
One of Oscar’s assignments calls for him to dress up as a motion capture performer and participate in a movie shoot. The actress who he encounters on the set: is she a performer like him, or just a “regular” actress? As we later learn, many of Oscar’s engagements seem to be with other performers, so it’s hard to say.
