Holy Motors (2012) on Netflix
Mr. Oscar leaves his family and steps into a white limousine. His driver, Céline, tells him nine appointments await, and each stop hands him a different identity.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.0/1051,673 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Paris, a wealthy man takes leave of his family and climbs into a white limousine. His driver, Céline, addresses him as Mr. Oscar and tells him that nine appointments fill his day. Inside the car he goes through a file, lifts out a mirror and grooms a gray wig. The first appointment makes him an old woman begging on the Pont Alexandre III. Later he wears a motion capture suit on an empty sound stage, and in the sewers he becomes Monsieur Merde, who abducts the model Kay M. from a photo shoot in a cemetery.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Holy Motors (2012)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Michel Piccoli's role as the man with the birthmark was originally intended for director Leos Carax himself, but Carax decided casting a filmmaker would be misleading. When Piccoli was cast, the plan to disguise him and credit him under a pseudonym was dropped once news of the casting reached the media.
- Leos Carax said that if Denis Lavant had said no to the lead in Holy Motors, he would have offered the part to Lon Chaney or Charlie Chaplin, or to Peter Lorre or Michel Simon, all of whom, he noted, were dead.
- Leos Carax won over investors worried about Holy Motors's budget by switching to digital photography, a process of which he strongly disapproves.
- Édith Scob had worked with Carax on Les Amants du Pont-Neuf but was almost entirely cut out of it, so he felt he owed her a larger role; casting her also gave an explicit nod to Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face, in which she starred.
- The character Kay M., played by Eva Mendes, came from a canceled project that was supposed to star Denis Lavant and Kate Moss and follow the Merde character from Tokyo! in the United States. Mendes was offered the role after she and Carax met at a film festival.
