The Beauty of the Art: An In-Depth Look at Holy Motors
Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012) felt more to me like a moving art piece than any other film I’ve seen. I can confidently say that I had no idea where it was going until it had already ended, so in my quest as a Searcher, I looked for a source that would simply help me unpack each step of Monsieur Oscar’s (Denis Lavant) journey. This Holy Motors review by a cinephile in 2013 titles and contextualizes each stop that he makes – in particular, Monsieur Merde’s kidnapping stint involving the unfortunate Kay M. (Eva Mendes).
During the screening, I was stunned by Kay M.’s indifference, how she watched unflinchingly as Monsieur Merde bit off an assistant’s fingers and licked her with someone else’s blood. (???) I kept asking myself, ‘At which point is she going to start freaking out?’, and then it dawned on me that she wasn’t going to freak out. She didn’t even feel like freaking out. The author of the review wrote, “It’s the fascination of Beauty versus the Beast and what exactly constitutes one or the other.”
As Monsieur Merde saw the beauty in Kay M., Kay M. saw the beauty right back in him. Without a single line of dialogue (besides the lullaby), she showed care and respect for Monsieur Merde. I couldn’t exactly characterize Kay M. myself, but the blog author wrote about her, “It’s about Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder, is it not? … throughout this segment, Mendes is never terribly threatened or even frightened of the man. She is not quite submissive or subservient, but simply not threatened.” I agree with this, and also with the author’s thoughts on the male gaze vs. the “monster gaze”. The author theorizes that by having Monsieur Merde idealize Kay M. both when she is in a revealing dress and when she is fully clad except for the eyes, he is forfeiting the male gaze for the “monster gaze”. He treats her in an exploitative nature, but not in pursuit of her skin or her sex – maybe in pursuit of her comforts, her femininity, or even her maternity? There is something Freudian about the scene where he lies naked on her lap: the blog author says when Kay M. starts singing, “it isn’t quite Stockholm syndrome, but perhaps a deep connection the two already had.”
As for the commentary that this segment might be making on the world of cinema, the author of the blog suggests that the juxtaposition of Monsieur Merde’s nudity and Kay M.’s lack of nudity calls into question “the objectification of women and the often lack thereof for men in film”. I agree with this; seeing Denis Lavant in the nude instead of Eva Mendes was a bit unconventional and I think Leos Carax definitely had an intent behind that. Overall, it was an utter whirlwind of a film; I found it beautifully filmed and appreciated its structure.
Hi Ria!
I liked that pun in the title-I was also “wholly shocked” from this film. I also had almost no idea and was pretty lost during the duration of the film , and was still pretty lost after it had ended.
As for someone who was lost throughout the journey, this resource was very helpful in understanding the inner meanings of the film. The metaphor of Beauty and the Beast, in my opinion, goes exceptionally well with the characteristics of this film. Also, looking into the detail of Monsieur’s nudity and Kay M.’s lack of it opened a new perspective for me.
In Korea, as I remember, this film was Rated R for just one scene where it contained nudity, even though all the other scenes were confirmed for 15years or older. Therefore, after the comparison of nudity, I felt that the age restriction on this film(which many Koreans evaluated as unnecessarily high) became a constraint to more people understanding the deep ideas of cinema.