Revisit Midnight Masterpiece ‘Holy Motors’: 2012 French Arthouse Ponders Cinema and the Self
On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.
First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.
More from IndieWire
Pedro Almodóvar's 'The Room Next Door' Enlivens Venice Premiere Audience
'In Waves and War' Review: A Moving Documentary About Wartime PTSD That Actually Offers Hope
Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation. [Editor’s Note: After Dark is mutating! Check back September 6 for a new format. It’s the same juicy midnight movie bait…with a little extra bite.]
The Pitch: Do the Talking Limousines Know Something We Don’t?
When talking about the state of arthouse movies in the 2020s, I often think about something I call “The ‘Titane’ Phenomenon.” Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winner is a wildly layered piece of art about trauma, gender, bodily autonomy, and revenge — yet to so many people, the extent of its cultural relevance is the fact that its star has sex with a Cadillac in it. Such is the life for challenging cinema in a saturated media climate. Arthouse films often need a shocking angle to have any hope at building something that resembles a mass audience, and cinema that stands the test of time is often initially marketed with campaigns that say little more than: “You won’t BELIEVE how WEIRD this is!!”
Leos Carax’s “Holy Motors” has endured a similar case of automobile-centric oversimplification. Released in 2012 to rapturous critical acclaim, the fantasy drama stars Denis Lavant as an actor who makes his living in the most surreal way imaginable: driving around in a limousine to various appointments, each of which requires him to put on an entirely new persona and then carry on with that persona’s day. Sometimes he’s an elderly woman begging on the streets. Other times he’s filming CGI sex scenes. At one point, he fakes his own death. The film has less to do with any specific act he performs than the mindset required to be a performer. As his day winds down, he begins to question whether waning interest in these abstract performances will eventually render his life’s work fruitless. It’s a richly nuanced piece of cinema, but to many, it will always be remembered for an iconic sequence in which limos take on human traits and begin to converse with each other.
While Carax’s film amounts to far more than its most bizarre scenes, there’s something fitting about it being remembered a little too often for its shock value. While cinephiles can argue about the puzzling details of each individual sequence, it’s not hard to interpret the film’s overarching message as a form of eulogy for cinema as we knew it. I’ve always felt that Carax was working through his own emotions about the almost delusional love that’s required to keep creating work in a medium whose business model has become increasingly unforgiving. The brilliant juxtaposition in our hero’s final acting sequence has always stuck with me as a reminder of the irrational sacrifices that artists put themselves through to keep working in the art form that fascinates so many of us.
Lavant’s Mr. Oscar doesn’t seem to be able to articulate why he keeps doing what he does, but he does it anyway because he can’t think of anything else. That’s why people make movies, and why people like us keep trying to preserve them. Yes, it’s easy to quibble over whether a film ought to be classified as a highbrow work of arthouse cinema or a transgressive midnight movie. But as long as we’re making progress at the increasingly task of getting people to see them, what difference does it really make? Market forces might create the illusion that challenging cinema is getting harder and harder to come by — but as long as people are guided by the same inexplicable drive as Mr. Oscar, I have no doubt that we have a chance. —CZ
The Aftermath: Ectoplasm on Wheels and a Safe Place for Chimpanzees
Bad advice is easy to come by, but here’s some for free anyway: Try being the same person in every room. That one-size-fits-all approach works for some, I’m sure, and it was attractive to me at one point. But watching “Holy Motors,” I was struck not just by the grief of digital-age cinephiles in a slowly dying landscape — but by the burden of any person made to be less complex than the art that intrigues them.
That hypothetical one version of you…never tasked with too many “appointments” or made to be too many people in too many rooms…would still be a character, like any of the roles Oscar is playing here. They would contend with the impromptu Eva Mendes kidnappings, random Parisian drive-by shootings, and life’s assorted accordion interludes because that’s their job. They’d manage the tense discussions between father and daughter…lover and lover…limousine driver and limousine driven because the script says someone has to.
In that removed serenity (cast another Kylie Minogue for my one true self, will you?), retiring to the metaphoric mezzanine might finally let a film lover sit and just… watch. But so far removed from the messiness of the real you, what movies would you make? Would you even want them?
Heading into Labor Day weekend, I’ll admit Leos Carax’s psychological apocalypse via arthouse felt like work — in the best way. The French filmmaker’s surreal fantasy and Cannes debut from 2012 is masterful, no question. It’s also so visually and emotionally overwhelming that it left me feeling raw while attempting to mingle at a wedding in Columbus, Ohio. As a matter of cinematic critique, it’s a ruthless vivisection of the stories the film industry has deemed worthy of telling and retelling ad infinitum. It’s also a cynical look at those diminishing returns and the degradation of the soul that’s sinking our floundering film culture.
On an existential level, “Holy Motors” is a nauseating confrontation between the abstract muse we make of our ourselves and the untrustworthy narrator always shaping that image. To love challenging films — to love challenging stories — is to love challenging people and challenging situations. And yet, in real life, that’s genuinely challenging. There are always too many movies to make, always too many characters to comfort, always too many cars to park. We suffer for it. How can we balance the hope of pushing for better while honoring what still feels like a miracle?
Whether you make your living in movies or obsess about them pro bono, works like “Holy Motors” can be agonizing to watch because they feel like an indictment of who we are. Foaming at the mouth to rip our muses apart, if only because they scare us, the unseen storyteller inside every midnight audience member will snatch at control however they can. Shame. Guilt. Doubts. Despair. Anger. I’ve critiqued myself while writing critique. I’ve misunderstood my own misunderstandings. I’ve analyzed when I should have felt and vice versa. The promise of objectivity has lured me in with bright-red flowers and bitten off my fingers more times than I care to count. Still, I’d do it again. Every time and in every room. Why?
Arriving like that “ectoplasm on wheels” (best road rage slur ever, by the way), Oscar is midnight movies personified — a pulsing nerve of curiosity and impulse that can only be sated by snapping the filter from your cinematic cigarette. The harshness of some fringe films can hit especially hard after midnight, but I’m comforted in that final familial vignette. Surrounded by chimpanzees, there’s a kindness to “Holy Motors” that reminds of After Dark’s earliest days. We’ve always had a soft spot for primates. —AF
Those brave enough to join the fun can stream “Holy Motors” for free on Tubi. IndieWire After Dark publishes midnight movie recommendations at 11:59 p.m. ET every Friday. Read more of our deranged suggestions…
Kate Winslet Burns It Down in Australian Haute Couture Revenge Movie ‘The Dressmaker’
‘Sugar & Spice’ Is the Child of ‘Bring It On’ and ‘Usual Suspects’ You Never Knew You Needed
Best of IndieWire
Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
