The Cinematheque

Essential Cinema

“Exhilarating … A gift for moviegoers … It’s cinema reloaded.”

Manohla Dargis, New York Times

Ranking high on many recent ​“best of the decade” lists, 2012’s Holy Motors marked the ecstatic return, after a too-long absence, of dazzling French director and notorious provocateur Leos Carax, who hadn’t made a feature since 1999’s Pola X. ​“Carax has roared back to form, and maybe even surpassed himself. This full-throttle cinematic fever dream stars Carax’s longtime muse Denis Lavant as 11 different characters — or maybe one character with 11 different identities — who crisscross Paris in a white stretch limousine over the course of one long, Borgesian, Lynchian day. There’s no mistaking the true location of the movie, however, for anywhere but Carax’s own feverish, movie-mad imagination … The film hopscotches wildly from fairy tale to thriller to musical to melodrama, around a nighttime Paris that has scarcely seemed more alive with narrative possibilities” (Scott Foundas, Film Comment).