Cannes 2012, May 16-27

[Chris Knipp]

Leos Carax's HOLY MOTORS. Why D'Angelo likes it so much.

D'A.'S DAY SEVEN.

D'Angelo's AV Club Cannes '12 Day Seven report is out, and it explains his 88 score for Léos Carax's HOLY MOTORS was not a misprint. The original tweet from May 22 when D'Angelo saw Carax's new film again was:

Holy Motors (Carax): 88. Holy shit.

Now he has elaborated on that in AV Club Cannes Day Seven report. His title for this report is "Cannes 2012, Day Seven: Leos Carax's bugfuck masterpiece strikes Cannes like a lightning bolt." I am dubious about how I will take this "bat-shit crazy" film (to quote another writer) but I was able to take the "Merde" Carax segment from the 2008 omnibus trilogy film Tokyo! perfectly seriously in a review.

There's obviously something here. The relatively more staid Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian also has a glowing review of the new Carax. He gives HOLY MOTORS five stars out of five and heads off with "Leos Carax's experimental odyssey is barking mad, weightless and euphoric – it's what we have all come to Cannes for."

Leos Carax's Holy Motors is weird and wonderful, rich and strange – barking mad, in fact. It is wayward, kaleidoscopic, black comic and bizarre; there is in it a batsqueak of genius, dishevelment and derangement; it is captivating and compelling. This film may or may not be a prizewinner here – although I think it may actually get the Palme d'Or – but really this is what we have all come to Cannes for: for 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. Some may find it affected or exasperating; I found it weightless and euphoric.--Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN.

Still from Holy Motors