Denis Lavant gives an extraordinary shape-shifting performance in 'Holy Motors'
The anarchic French director Leos Carax last directed a film 13 years ago, 鈥淧ola X,鈥� which in a roundabout way derived from Herman Melville鈥檚 novel 鈥淧ierre.鈥� I suspect his new film, 鈥淗oly Motors,鈥� is also tinged with Melville 鈥� in this case his novel 鈥淭he Confidence-Man.鈥�
鈥淗oly Motors鈥� is about Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant, in an extraordinary, shape-shifty performance), who impersonates 11 different personas in the course of the same day. His limo driver (Edith Scob) chauffeurs him on a series of 鈥渁ppointments鈥� in which he dresses up as an old beggar woman, a madman in a street market, an assassin, and so on. The limo is聽 equipped with a full dressing room of costumes and props and his charades, which range from roisterous to supremely creepy, last far into the night.
This is the kind of it-can-mean-whatever-you-want-it-to-mean art film that I usually run from, but Carax is such a prodigiously gifted mesmerist that, if you give way, you鈥檙e likely to be enfolded in the film鈥檚 phantasmagoria. It鈥檚 a movie about, among things, movies, but it expresses a wondrousness and dread that make it far more than a 肠颈苍茅补蝉迟别鈥檚 exercise. It鈥檚 also much better than that other back-of-the-limo movie this year, David Cronenberg鈥檚 stultifying 鈥淐osmopolis.鈥� Grade: B+ (Unrated.)
