Denis Lavant gives an extraordinary shape-shifting performance in 'Holy Motors'

( Unrated ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

Lavant wows as a man who impersonates 11 different people in the course of a day.

|
Gus Ruelas/Reuters
Eva Mendes stars in 'Holy Motors.'

The anarchic French director Leos Carax last directed a film 13 years ago, “Pola X,” which in a roundabout way derived from Herman Melville’s novel “Pierre.” I suspect his new film, “Holy Motors,” is also tinged with Melville – in this case his novel “The Confidence-Man.”

“Holy Motors” 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 “appointments” in which he dresses up as an old beggar woman, a madman in a street market, an assassin, and so on. The limo is  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’re likely to be enfolded in the film’s phantasmagoria. It’s a movie about, among things, movies, but it expresses a wondrousness and dread that make it far more than a cinéaste’s exercise. It’s also much better than that other back-of-the-limo movie this year, David Cronenberg’s stultifying “Cosmopolis.” Grade: B+ (Unrated.)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Denis Lavant gives an extraordinary shape-shifting performance in 'Holy Motors'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2012/1116/Denis-Lavant-gives-an-extraordinary-shape-shifting-performance-in-Holy-Motors
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe