The sort of enigmatic movie that many critics embrace because it’s open to endless interpretation, Leos Carax’s exhaustingly wacky French flick features former acrobat Denis Lavant playing no fewer than 11 roles in the course of a single evening.
Possibly an actor, he’s traveling around Paris in a white limousine, inhabiting various personas (including a hit man and his businessman victim) during his “appointments.’’
In the most outrageous stop, he’s a gargoyle who kidnaps fashion model Eva Mendes during a photo shoot in a cemetery — and falls asleep in her arms with an enormous, well you can imagine.
You could say that’s a pretty good metaphor for what Carax is up to in “Holy Motors,” though some reviewers insist this prolonged stunt is an intoxicating homage to the power of cinema. And is the WTF ending scene — in the garage that gives the film its title — an homage to “The Love Bug’’?
Perhaps when Aussie pop singer Kylie Minogue hurls herself off a parapet, she’s really proclaiming the death of film criticism.