Andrew Welch

Captive Audience: A Response to Holy Motors

Holy Motors touched a nerve. Void of almost any exposition, it seems designed to provoke. We know only what we see: A man named Oscar (Denis Lavant) travels through Paris in a white limo, changing identities and stopping at one place after another to act out in bizarre, sometimes disturbing ways. We don’t know why, […]

M. Leary

Favorite Films of 2012

This was an interesting year. Through some quirks of distribution, I was not able to see Petzold’s Barbara, which is the film I was looking forward to the most. I also didn’t get a chance to see Tabu or This is Not a Film. From what I gather, all three of these are challenging films that fit neatly in […]

M. Leary

Holy Motors (Carax, 2012)

Holy Motors lends itself to conversation about identity and all the slippery little details we cobble together to make sense of ourselves and our relationships. Father, daughter, elder, voyeur, employee, companion, uncle, etc… There is a Confucian arithmetic to the way Lavant’s character travels across so many different relationships in this troubling riot of a film, […]