Film Forum

Perennial French bad boy auteur Leos Carax (LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE, MAUVAIS SANG, POLA X) re-imagines the City of Light as the backdrop for nearly a dozen surreal adventures starring the filmmaker’s longtime collaborator Denis Lavant as a 21st century man of a thousand faces. Travelling in a white stretch limo, with his elegant, imperturbable female chauffeur (Édith Scob), he effortlessly transforms from Oscar, a conventional businessman, to a motion-capture acrobat, the leader of a boisterous accordion marching band, a sewer-dwelling leprechaun (who kidnaps a supermodel, played by Eva Mendes), an assassin, a bag lady, a forlorn lover (of Kylie Minogue) and… Michel Piccoli has a cameo as Oscar’s mysterious boss. “Exhilarating, opaque, heartbreaking and completely bonkers… a deliciously preposterous piece of filmmaking that appraises life and death and everything in between, reflected in a funhouse mirror.” – Megan Lehmann, The Hollywood Reporter

2012     116 MIN.     IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

THE YFF ARCHIVE DIVE is a new screening series programmed specifically for YFF by Tristan Pollack and curated from FF’s rich 54-year history of first-run premieres. The series introduces important, challenging works and underseen masterpieces to members in their 20s and 30s. Learn about YFF here. YFF-eligible members, please email jesse@filmforum.org for details on this and future YFF gatherings.

Originally programmed for Film Forum by Karen Cooper and Mike Maggiore

Reviews

“THE BEST FILM OF 2012!”
– The New Yorker
– Cahiers du Cinema
– Film Comment
– IndieWire

“THE BEST FILM OF THE 2010s. Set in the most beautiful Paris imaginable, a city of silvery graveyards and shuttered department stores teeming with art nouveau specters, HOLY MOTORS is exuberant and melancholic at once, an expression of everything movies can mean when they take us to places beyond meaning.”
– Stephanie Zacharek, TIME

“An episodic work of great visual invention — from scene to scene, you never see what’s coming — that reminds you just how drearily conventional many movies are… Wonderfully it feels unlike anything else: it’s cinema reloaded.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“A film full of invention and energy.”
– Ginette Vincendeau, Sight + Sound

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