Holy Motors Corporation

In the prologue, a sleeping person ( Leos Carax ) wakes up from the sound of waves heard in his room. He discovers a secret door through the wall through which he enters the dark hall of the cinema , where still viewers watch a film that woke the hero.

The main part shows one day in the life of a man named Monsieur Oscar ^[3] ( Denis Laban ), who moves around Paris in a long white limousine with his personal driver Céline ( Edith Skob ).

Early in the morning, an elderly banker leaves the house in Ivelin ( ) and gets into a limousine, where he discusses business matters on a cell phone. Then he asks Celine if he has a lot of meetings today, to which she replies that there are nine of them and the material for the first meeting is on the seat in the folder. Monsieur Oscar examines the folder and the next time he leaves the limousine already in the image of a hunched old woman who collects alms on the bridge of Alexander III .

Then Oscar changes clothes in a limousine for the next meeting (as for all meetings, he studies the information on what needs to be done immediately before). In a black tight-fitting suit with sensors, he enters a dark room, where he performs various movements recorded by cameras . Then a woman in red appears in the hall with similar sensors, with whom Oscar depicts a passionate love scene, on the basis of which an animation with monsters is created.

The next image of Oscar is Mr. Shit (from the film “Tokyo!”), Who enters the cemetery through the sewer hatch, where “Visit my site” is written on each gravestone. There is a photo shoot of supermodel Kay M. ^[4] ( Eva Mendes ), which Mr. Shit kidnaps and leads to the dungeon. There he redraws her clothes to hide her face and shoulders, and then falls asleep, resting her head on her lap; beauty sings the lullaby to the monster .

It is already getting dark, and the next role of Oscar is the father of the girl, whom he takes from the party. On the way home, it turns out that the girl first deceived her father, saying that the party was a success and she danced a lot - it turns out, in fact, the girl, embarrassed by her appearance, immediately locked herself in the bathroom and sat there all the time.

This is followed by an “ intermission ” in which Oscar plays the harmonica in the church building, and then a crowd of other musicians joins him (a cover version of Blues song Let My Baby Ride is performed).

In the next incarnation, the hero is a man named Alex, who is supposed to kill a certain Theo (they are doubles, however Alex is shaved bald, and Theo has long hair and a beard). Initially, they discuss some incident that Theo is responsible for. Killing Theo, Alex shaves it and puts his clothes on him, but the dying Theo himself sticks a knife into Alex. Alex in blood barely gets to the limo ^[5] .

In a limousine, Oscar talks with a person who turns up there with a birthmark on his face ( Michel Piccoli ), possibly his employer. He complains to him that he “lacks cameras”, but he continues to work as before.

Passing by a cafe, Oscar asks Celine to stop the car, runs out with a gun and shoots a banker sitting at a table (from his first incarnation). Oscar is shot by the banker's bodyguards, and Céline takes him away, saying that they can be late.

Further, the hero appears in the image of a deep old man, Monsieur Vaughan, who lies in bed in a hotel room, next to him is a huge black dog. A young woman, his niece, approaches him. They talk, realizing that Monsieur Vaughan is dying. After the last breath of the old man, Oscar and the girl diverge, since each one has other “meetings” planned further.

On the way, the limousine collides with another white limousine in which Oscar sees his former lover Eva ( Kylie Minogue ), whom they parted with long ago. They roam the department store, which was closed for repairs, and go out onto the roof. Eva sings Oscar a song ( Who were we? ), But then he needs to leave, because she has the next “meeting”. Going out into the street, Oscar sees that Eva in the form of a stewardess rushed from the roof of the building.

Celine takes Oscar to the house where he will meet for the last time and where he will spend the night. They break up until tomorrow. Oscar comes into the house and calls his wife and daughter, who are monkeys . Celine returns to the Holy Motors parking lot, where dozens of white limousines call at this time. There she puts on the mask that the actress performing this role ( Edith Scob ) wore in the cult film Georges Frangue “ Eyes Without a Face ” (1960). When drivers leave the garage, limousines, blinking headlights, exchange remarks about the past day.

• Denis Laban - Monsieur Oscar / banker / pauper, etc.
• Edith Scob - Celine
• Eva Mendes - Kay M
• Kylie Minogue - Eva Grace (Gin)
• Eliza Lomo - Lea (Eliza)
• Michelle Piccoli - A Man With a Birthmark
• Jeanne Disson - Angela
• Leos Carax - sleeping man
• Nastya Golubeva-Karaks - a girl in the window

For several years, Carax tried to find funding for a large English-language film, but did not succeed in this and decided to remind himself after a long absence of a more modest production ^[6] . Although initially it was not ruled out that both Denis Laban and Juliette Binoche , already playing with Carax, could participate in the film, as a result, Binoche was not involved in the film. However, stars like Eva Mendes and Kylie Minogue starred in it.

The shooting took place from September to November 2011 in Paris. One of the hypostases of the hero of Laban is the underground resident "Monsieur Merd" ^[7] , who first appeared in the movie novel created by Carax for the movie almanac "Tokyo!" ^[8] . The legendary Michel Piccoli was planned to be made up beyond recognition and presented in the credits under an assumed name, however, when information about his participation in the film hit the press, this idea had to be abandoned. Eva Mendes in makeup reminded some viewers of Amy Winehouse ^{[9] [10]} .

The premiere screening of the film in Cannes has delighted the audience.

In a report from Cannes, Anton Dolin called the film “a bitter and funny, happy and ridiculous, absurd and logical picture,” noting that the director’s new film “is two hours of dizzying freedom” and that “the audience has his picture, as in the case of with his previous films, it caused a shock, the effect of shell-shock by cinema, which, once experienced, I want to relive again ” ^[11] .

According to the observation of Valery Kichin , Carax “builds his film according to the laws of theatrical performance .. as in a circus, makes up an action from interludes ... inspired by the tale of Hoffmann about a man who finds a secret door to the opera house in his bedroom” ^[12] .

Andrei Plakhov criticized the awkward, in his opinion, Russian translation of the name, drawing attention to the fact that in essence “we are talking about the sacred motors of author's inspiration” ^[13] . In his review, he likened Carax's “ baroque ecstatic poem” to some tapes of the surrealist Jean Cocteau .

No less appreciated was the imagination of Carax in the foreign press ^[14] . On the pages of The New York Times, Manola Dargis defined the director's new work as “a dream about films, which is perceived as a film about dreams” ^[15] . Although “at times it seems that the film is glued from many other films”, she included “Holy Motors” in the top ten films of the year. Since the protagonist works for something that most resembles God, this is a film about making films and about the “ecstasy of creation,” the reviewer argues ^[15] .

Jim Hoberman believes that in the scene with the killing of a double, “the film hurts itself, from the realm of pure irrationality, descending to the level of a theatrical concetto , not reaching the level of Rivett and involved in cosmology from Charlie Kaufman ’s repertoire” ^[16] .

• Information about the film on the website of the company Les films du losange