Holy Motors

Saw Holy Motors (thanks, Basil!) It was very confusing. It begins in what is probably a dream sequence. The main character opens a hidden door in his bedroom to find an audience sleeping in front of old, kinetoscope-style shorts of nude men pulling ropes, running, throwing bricks, etc. After an ambiguous fade to black, he leaves his house, enters a limousine, and begins talking stocks and accounts on a cell phone. Ah, we think, he is a high-powered businessman. But then he pulls out a grey wig and is soon in disguise (?) as a bag-lady, mumbling about how she will never die. We continue to watch him don various disguises inside the limousine and preform little vignette-ish performances across Paris, the most bizarre being a wizened leprechaun-like man who abducts a fashion model. I won't ruin any surprises, but it's very strange. Also, there's an awesome intermission musical bit.

The eventual explanation for this madness is (perhaps) when a fat man appears inside the limo and they talk about cameras too small to be seen. The man we are following is an actor, rushing from shoot to shoot. We are now in deep post-modern waters. We already know we cannot trust what we see and now we know perhaps why. There is an interesting sequence where he is reunited with an actress from his past (who is riding in a similar limo.) They talk amid disassembled mannikins, which seem to suggest sex with their positioning. There is suddenly a musical sequence about a child they had together. This musical acts ends abruptly when our hero kicks a mannikin child's head like a soccer ball. They part and the actress begins her scene, as a suicidal air-hostess. Our hero comes upon her dead body on the sidewalk and screams in horror. But wasn't that just an act? Was his reminiscences with her just an act? There was a musical sequence, which would suggest so, but then when did the scene begin? Surely not in the limo. Have we been watching this man through one of the invisible cameras all along? Questions upon questions.

The ending is a barrage of increasing strangeness. I don't want to spoil anything (particularly because my powers of justification completely fail here,) so I'll talk a bit about the mood of the piece. The above may give you the impression that this film is wacky and manic, but it is deliberate and slow. The ending, though absurd, is suffused with sadness. It may be that I'm taking the film too seriously and mistaking tragicomic for plain old tragic, but I think the increasingly weary melancholy of the hero is genuinely affecting. Every little vignette is either sad or grim or both. I wish it had been a bit more upbeat, but as it is it ranks with "Synecdoche, New York" in terms of fascinating, sad, strangeness.