I suspect that viewers will either love or hate "Holy Motors," a surreal French drama that eventually falls victim to its own pretentiousness.
It tells the tale of an actor/quick-change artist who rides around Paris in a specially designed stretch-limo, donning various costumes and enacting bizarre movie-type scenes for paying customers. One moment he's a sewer-dwelling beast in search of a "beauty;" the next he's a hit man , then a female beggar, then a dying old man, even, at one point, a CGI effect come to life.
Written and directed by Leos Carax, the movie ultimately emerges as a cinematic Rorschach Test, open to whichever interpretation each member of the audience cares to get out of it. Is it about how we all eventually wind up donning masks and false identities as a means of escaping the crushing monotony of our daily lives? Or is it about how we use such masks to avoid showing ourselves and the world-at-large who we really are? Or is it a dissertation on the nature of art and the artist, or on the changing nature of movie making in an era in which the camera has become a ubiquitous part of everyday life, available to anyone and everyone at all times?
Who knows, and, frankly, who really cares? In terms of execution, Carax lacks the light hand and delicate touch of a Luis Bunuel from his late French period. "Holy Motors," on the other hand, is redundant and, at times, downright unpleasant, and much too impressed with its own cleverness to be of much interest to any but the most esoteric-minded of viewers. But the Paris locales are nice.
