Exclusive: The US poster for the year's best movie 'Holy Motors'
Neon and neoprene sell the burnished dream of Leos Carax
Stills and one-sheets can only hint at the gorgeous palette of 'Holy Motors,' the new film by Leos Carax
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While I was at Fantastic Fest last week, "Holy Motors" screened five or six times, and they kept adding screenings later in the schedule. It was wildly impressive to see how many people fell in love with the film. It's not an easy movie. It's not a movie that will ever play on 3000 screens at one time. But it's a gorgeous movie, a big beautiful drunken dream of a movie, and I love that people are responding to it.
The movie's going to be opening in the US soon, in limited release, and when the film's publicists asked if I wanted to be the first one to present the poster to you, I jumped. Selling a movie like "Holy Motors" is a real test, because it doesn't offer anything like a conventional plot, and it's not particularly star-heavy. Eva Mendes and Kylie Minogue both appear in it, and Minogue is great in it. The film belongs to Dennis Levant and Edith Scob, and it's the most amazing duet of the year, a dance between these two great actors. Scob is part of France's film history, and I can't think of a better way to wrap up an iconic career of performances than in a film about the power of icons and performance.
I said earlier this year that it would make a perfect double-feature with "Cloud Atlas," and sure enough, seeing them within a day of each other at Fantastic Fest affirms them as some of my favorite films of the year so far, and I'm excited to see what happens when audiences finally get their shot at enjoying them.
So without further ado, here's the one-sheet, which makes perfect sense to debut here on Motion/Captured:
If the film does play near you, I urge you to see it on the biggest screen you can find. It's a theatrical experience, a movie that should be shared, one I'll definitely see at least once more in a theater this year.
"Holy Motors" will also play at the NYFF on October 11, so if you live in New York, you've got a shot at seeing it sooner than everyone else.
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Login or create a HitFix account Login SignupRobert Adlington
October 2, 2012 at 1:26PM EST Reply to CommentWe saw this in Paris. Totally crazy. Wonderful. Mysterious
eoindaly2k11
October 2, 2012 at 1:42PM EST Reply to CommentI think you mean the worst movie of the year.
Stormshadow4life
October 2, 2012 at 2:20PM EST Reply to CommentSo is there an actual release date? Can't find anything official anywhere
drew It starts rolling out October 17th. We'll see how wide it eventually goes.
October 2, 2012 at 3:15PM ESTWG Hope this helps: http://holymotorsfilm.com/theaters/
October 2, 2012 at 4:55PM ESTStormshadow4life it does....unfortunately, nothing in PA for now.
October 2, 2012 at 6:10PM ESTDefRef
October 2, 2012 at 4:24PM EST Reply to CommentI'm having two major problems with the presentation of this film around film sites:
1. The title makes no sense on its own. I don't know if it's explained in the context of the film, but for the longest time I thought it was about some religious guy with a car dealership/church or something. "Holy" implies something; "Motors" implies something; "Holy Motors" says nothing.
2. While crazy overhype has occurred before (e.g. Drive; Attack the Block), the "reviews" I've seen for Holy Motors have been even more profoundly unhelpful because they've been little more than people running around squealing about how awesomesauce it is and that it's super-challenging and not for the stupid people who consume mainstream entertainment. After Nordling jizzed in his pants over this and Cloud Atlas, a Talkbacker asked, "So what's it about?" Same with the first comment here: "Totally crazy. Wonderful. Mysterious." Yeah, that really sells it.
If you think that people are going to pack up and drive to the theater with $4 gas and pay $10 per head based on the fact that film nerds are squeeing themselves silly, you're all high. The fact that, as a constant reader of Hitfix and AICN among other sites and someone who tries to be vaguely aware of films beyond the studio pap sluiced into the theaters week after week, I haven't the slightest idea of what this movie is about and NO ONE SEEMS CAPABLE OF PROVIDING A LOG LINE DESCRIPTION because they're just gibbering like loons about their emotional reactions to the movie.
The Artist was "a black-and-white movie about a silent film actor who struggles with the advent of sound pictures." That can pique interest in others. The typing about Holy Motors has been like watching someone at the other end of a football field eating something and then running around making loud happy squee sounds, eventually rushing up to you and saying, "It's so awesome. You must eat it. It's not for everyone, but discerning palates will be thrilled," without a peep as to what the heck it is; meat, dessert, candy, something that will kill someone with allergies?
Once upon a time, movie criticism took a moment to explain what the heck the movie is about, then critiquing, analyzing, rhapsodizing, whatever about it. Now it's twaddle like, "It's not an easy movie....But it's a gorgeous movie, a big beautiful drunken dream of a movie, and I love that people are responding to it....it doesn't offer anything like a conventional plot....Scob is part of France's film history, and I can't think of a better way to wrap up an iconic career of performances than in a film about the power of icons and performance."
WHAT DOES ANY OF THAT MEAN?!? What does the poster tell us? Neon letters, Cirque du Soleil woman in a magenta motion-capture suit, Eiffel Tower, so it's France. This must be the most useless one-sheet since Scott Pilgrim vs. the World with a faceless guy playing a bass guitar and the tag line, "An epic of epic epicness." (Yeah, I dunno why that didn't gross a bazillion smackers either.) See here and ponder that some studio weasel collected a paycheck for approving this thing: http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/scott_pilgrim_vs_the_world_teaser_poster_01.jpg
What is most annoying about the Holy Motors hype compared to the aforementioned Drive and Attack the Block is that at least those two had describable plots (i.e. "Stunt driver who moonlights as wheelman gets involved with a neighbor woman;" "An English gang fights off an alien invasion in their tenement buildings") while Holy Motors is apparently so amazeballs that the human race is barely capable of understanding it, but luckily the insular film nerd elite have magic decoder rings to grok it. Spare me.
P.S. In case anyone is thinking, "Why don't you just Google what it's about?" that that proves my point that film writers have seemingly lost the ability to write about this film. Indeed it does.
/rant
Eyes There's genuine difficulty in reducing it to a soundbite. It's a movie about a guy who is driven around in a limo, changing his costume everywhere he stops. But why? It's not at all senseless, but you have to bring your own sense to it. You're encouraged to, which is what makes it such a pure piece of filmmaking.
October 2, 2012 at 9:06PM ESTIt's not made for the nerd elite (can there even be such a thing? I hadn't noticed nerds checking IDs at the door). This is a movie that can never be summed up with a tagline or a 10-second TV spot. But since you asked: there are actual supernatural cars. So some truth in the advertising, after all.
Milla You need fantasy and imagination, not logic to understand this movie. Get it!?!
October 2, 2012 at 11:37PM ESTDefRef @EYES - Thanks for attempting to describe the plot. Wikipedia has only this: "Lavant plays a man who travels between multiple parallel lives." Um, OK. Not seeing the appeal yet.
October 3, 2012 at 12:23AM ESTThe quotes from the crix at Cannes are just as gaseous as everything I've seen and groused about and I'm rapidly growing allergic to the very idea of this movie because it sounds like people who are bored of formula and garbage overreacting to something that attempts to be the least bit original. It's like someone who encounters a Dominos pizza after a year of eating Little Caesar's and thinks it's just the finest foodstuff ever. No, it's just different from the crap you're used to.
They say that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but movies shouldn't be that difficult and when I see universal inarticulateness around something, the alarm starts to go off. I went and looked at the trailer and between the mo-cap people, the makeup shots, and other cinematic tropes, the unmistakeable stink of a self-indulgent "movie about the movies" wafted through the air. Suddenly it's 1985 and everyone is saying that the fact you can't understand what Michael Stipe is singing on R.E.M. records is what makes it so brilliant. Flash-forward to the present and no one can come up with anything more coherent than, "something different, experimental, a tilting at windmills, a great big pole-vault over the barrier of normality by someone who feels that the possibilities of cinema have not been exhausted by conventional realist drama....a film about the stuff of cinema itself." Erm. Mah. Gerd. Fer. Realz?
Look at it this way: There had to have been SOMETHING that people could look at - a pitch, a script, concept art - in order to get this thing financed and to attract a cast. I somehow doubt that Eva Mendes' people committed her to the project because it promised to be "Totally crazy. Wonderful. Mysterious." Egad.
The "synopsis" from the original site is quoted at Rotten Tomatoes: "From dawn to dusk, a few hours in the life of Monsieur Oscar, a shadowy character who journeys from one life to the next. He is, in turn, captain of industry, assassin, beggar, monster, family man... He seems to be playing roles, plunging headlong into each part - but where are the cameras? Monsieur Oscar is alone, accompanied only by Céline, the slender blonde woman behind the wheel of the vast engine that transports him through and around Paris. He's like a conscientious assassin moving from hit to hit. In pursuit of the beautiful gesture, the mysterious driving force, the women and the ghosts of past lives. But where is his true home, his family, his rest?"
FINALLY! Something that provides a hint of what you're signing up for. It definitely sounds like a film nerd circle jerk which allows the snobbiest elitists (see below) and opportunity to stroke their chins furiously and show off that Film Appreciation class they took at the Learning Annex.
I'll check out Holy Motors, but I must say the teeth-pulling to get to this point has made me wary. I don't think movies are meant to be a secret society to exclude the great unwashed heathens who don't "get" the avant garde.
@MILLA - Wow, you are the embodiment of everything I complained about. No information, just sneering elitism and condescension that presumes I'm insufficiently imaginative to understand its brilliance. They should reprint the poster with your blurb: "You're probably too stupid to get it, unlike moi. XOXO Milla."
Eyes A lot of the reaction you're talking about is just honest feeling. To describe it in too much detail is to bleed the magic out of it (true of many movies). But there's also an inherent problem in imposing order on the events shown. You can see it in the official synopsis - what exactly is it talking about?
October 3, 2012 at 1:03AM ESTI think the love for it is much more than just a rebound from the endless formula that comes out these days. There is plenty of formula in it - just presented in an unexpected way. Nobody can really tell you whether you will enjoy it or not. It's a risky experience from start to finish.
DefRef Oh, for pity's sake, this is precisely the overheated hyperbole that backfires.
October 3, 2012 at 1:14AM EST>" It's a risky experience from start to finish."
Walking a foot patrol in Afghanistan is a risky experience from start to finish. Holy Motors is a fraking MOVIE! The worst thing that can happen is you've wasted two hours and a few bucks. Put off seeing it until you rent the DVD for a buck or stream it from Netflix and you can think after 15 minutes, "Well, this is a whole lotta nothing," and cut it off and get on to other things.
And to be even-handed, the one-sentence burp about it being the worst movie of the year is almost as useless as the overpraise. At what point of being on the Internet do the part of people's brains that express cogent thoughts die off? WHY is it the worst? Yeeesh.
Eyes Two hours and a few bucks is a cost, and a risk, unless you have those things in infinite supply. I know I don't. By the way, the big audience, big screen and big dark room, not the iPhone or laptop, is definitely the proper way to see this, because it's all about that experience.
October 3, 2012 at 1:23AM ESTdrew I think I more than addressed what the movie's about in my initial Cannes review. I also talked about the context in which the movie was made as far as Carax is concerned. This piece was not a review, so, no, I didn't provide a long plot synopsis again.
October 3, 2012 at 1:46AM ESTMilla
October 2, 2012 at 11:33PM EST Reply to CommentSaw the movie twice and I was absolutely mesmerized by it. Funny, tragic, clever and beautiful. A truly amazing piece of artistic cinema!
Eyes Just another day at the motion capture factory.
October 3, 2012 at 1:15AM EST