All the world’s a stage, right? And each of us is merely
a player with many roles to perform. Monsieur Oscar has many performances (or
appointments) to give during the course of one day in Leos Carax’s enigmatic
and occasionally frustrating Holy Motors.
Oscar (Denis Lavant) is driven around Paris in the back
of a white limousine. Inside the space he occupies seems impossibly large and
is outfitted with all manner of makeup, wigs, prosthetics, costumes, and props
for Oscar to play, at different points in the day, a beggar woman, a technical
stand-in for an action sci-fi film, a thug, a father, and on and on. His driver
Celine (Edith Scob), who also serves as his assistant, tells him at the start
of the day he has nine of these appointments, but I lost count around five.
