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Leos Carax’s 2012 film Holy Motors features an avant-garde form and genre fluidity that stays true to the art of film. Carax’s extensive use of paradoxes and symbolism criticises the modern yet “dying” medium of film.

At the beginning of the film, the mise-en-scene consisting of a low angled shot of a man on the balcony of a movie theatre overlooking an audience watching a film is a meta-narrative in itself. Meta in the way that I was watching a man observing movie-goers watching a film. The man exemplifies the importance of isolating oneself from the overused, regulated and recycled concepts in films.

Moreover, Carax’s relies on juxtaposing in order to subvert audience’s expectations. Towards the beginning of the film, the audience assumes that Denis Laurent’s character is an affluent, white-collar worker through his tailored suit, white limo, Celine as a professionally dressed chauffeur and the constant referral to “appointments”. As soon as the back of the limo transforms into a dressing room, so does Mr Oscar’s appearance into a homeless person. In conjunction with the sudden switch from a white collar worker to a homeless person, Mr Oscar describes himself as “alone, and they are everybody” through non-diegetic sound. This suggests that people can still feel isolated and alone despite the obvious contrast in social and economic factors.

Each “appointment” therefore represents as established narratives in film with contradictions. There’s the “anti” coming-of-age with Angele, the poignant romance with Eva Green, the science fiction interaction with the CGI aliens, the spontaneous musical number with the orchestra, the dark comedy of the “beauty and the beast” appointment and the nuclear family but with chimps.

Carvax even questions illusion from reality. The white limousine is used as a motif to epitomise Mr Oscar’s inner psyche and sense of reality. L’Homme a la tache de vin is a figment of Mr Oscar’s subconsciousness through his lack of interaction with Celine in the limousine. While communicating with L’Homme a la tache de vin, he argues that “there’s no more (eye of the) beholder” when defining beauty. Carax reiterates how people are blinded by societal trends and expectations that people conform and thus aren’t their own beholders.  Kylie Minogue’s character as she explains to Mr Oscar that her eyes are actually “Eva’s eyes” during an appointment and further reiterates how reality itself can be an “act” as we can often accept real life situations in film as reality.

Holy Motors stays true to what it conveys, as we as the audience have to think for ourselves and are left with a heap of unanswered questions. Well, that’s post-modernism for you.