The film opens with a man waking up in a dark room. He seems disoriented and walks around the room, coming finally to a wall covered with forest-themed wall paper. He examines it for a moment, and finds a hole, in which he inserts a bolt attached to his finger, and the wall is revealed to be hiding a door. The man follows a corridor onto the balcony of a packed theater, the audience entranced with whatever is on the screen. A baby waddles down the aisle, and a threatening predator follows. Then the scene changes, and we begin viewing Oscar and his life.
Oscar leaves a huge house full of children and goes to work for the day. There are some very expensive cars in the driveway, but he walks past them to a limo waiting for him. He is greeted by the limo driver and once in the limo, finds a folder briefing him on his first assignment. Oscar is dressed in a suit, has an earpiece that he's talking into. From the initial shot, we get the idea that he's a business tycoon or somethings. He asks the limo driver how many assignments he has that day, and then picks up a folder briefing him on this first of the day... which is to apparently dress up as an old woman and beg for change on a sidewalk.
In each assignment, he is required to complete some task as a different person. He's an old woman, an old man, a trollish looking man who lives in the sewer, a thug, etc. In each of these roles, the people he interacts with seem to know him, as if there is a history between them. It's almost as if he is participating in small segments of several different movies. At one point, he meets with a person who appears to be his boss, and the idea that he's acting for an audience is reinforced. Oscar's last assignment is to go 'home' to his 'family', which are chimpanzees. The last scene we are left with is his limo driver parking the limousine in a lot full of limos, the lot is called Holy Motors. She puts on a plain, white mask, and calls someone to tell them that she was coming home. She then walks out of the parking lot wearing the mask.
I don't really know what this film is trying to say. It could be a literal interpretation of the idea that 'all the world's a stage'. That every situation we encounter is just a dramatization, with actors who are different people than who they're presenting themselves to be in a certain moment. That people alter themselves according to a situation. Maybe it's the idea that we all wear 'masks' in our every day lives. I'm really not sure, but the film was interesting to watch anyway. It's hard to choose a favourite assignment, but I think the one I liked best was when Oscar was an accordion player. He is determinedly walking down a darkened alleyway playing a button accordion, and slowly other people begin joining him with more accordions and various other instruments. It's a passionate scene, it reminds me of grassroots revolutions and the power of music to organize. The song is pretty good too. My second favourite might be the troll scene. He plays this weird man who is singled out by a photographer at a photo shoot and asks if he can join his model to do a 'beauty and the beast' shot. He ends up biting off someone's finger, kidnapping the model and taking her down into the sewers, and then creates this really symbolically charged scene where he has obvious desire for the model, but never actually touches her in an aggressive or sexual way. He takes a bit of her dress and turns it into a sort of hijab like garment, and then falls asleep naked with his head on her lap, flower petals sprinkled on his torso. Also, I don't know if there was a meaning behind the cigarettes, or if it's just a French thing to do, but this guy is a smoke-aholic. He's sucking back a cigarette in almost every scene.
There is nudity in this film, both a weird computer graphic version, as well as the actors themselves. So if you intend to watch this, you now know. It is also in French, so you will have to deal with subtitles.
While I don't really understand what this film means, I kind of like that about it. It's something that I have to actually work out and spend tie thinking about. It's not your average movie about angst or drama or explosions. It's something different, and is actually pretty good. I'm sure I would appreciate it even more if I knew what the 'big picture' was, but it's still very interesting. I couldn't look away. At first, because I didn't understand what was going on, and then because I wanted to understand the reason behind what was going on. Fun for the whole (almost) family!
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