Carax at Film Forum: Mr. X

Can a director with only five full features sustain a documentary and a retrospective? In this case, Leos Carax’s Holy Motors alone should provide ample fodder for weeks of analysis. Yet, Carax himself remains a cipher, despite the efforts of Tessa Louise-Salomé to illuminate the mystery man and his films in Mr. X: a Vision of Leos Carax (trailer here), which opens this Friday at Film Forum as part of their Carax series now underway.

What sort of name is Leos Carax? “A real assumed” one he responds, when asked. Perhaps that is somewhat clarifying (it also happens to be an anagram of “Oscar” and “Alex”). The rest of his biography remains quite murky and that is not due to any clerical oversight on his part. Clearly, Louise- Salomé tries to capitalize on the intrigue of Carax’s mystique, but she never scores a meaningful peak behind the mask. Instead, Mr. X steadily morphs into a critical appreciation of the filmmaker’s small but rich body of work, led by his longtime champion, Richard Brody of The New Yorker.

At least, Louise-Salomé maintains a Caraxian vibe, filming her talking heads amid evocative shadows and the flickering images of Carax’s films. Even Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa and actor Denis Lavant (widely considered Carax’s on-screen alter-ego) submit to her human movie screen treatment, but not the man himself, who is present solely via prior canned voiceovers.

Those looking for tangible dish will be disappointed, but the initiated should enjoy seeing the cult auteur’s cult auteur get his cinematic laurels. Arguably, the most intriguing sequences involve his near Waterloo, the dramatically over-budget Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, but all his features are revisited at length, along with Merde, Carax’s contribution to the anthology film Tokyo!, whose title character he would memorably revisit in Holy Motors (or Holy Moly Motors as some call it).

The gee-whiz enthusiasm for Carax shared by Louise- Salomé and her interview subjects (including Harmony Korine, Kylie Minogue, and Cannes Festival president Gilles Jacob) is appealing and Kaname Onoyama’s stylish cinematographer rather befits the subject. However, Mr. X never transcends its fannish devotion. Recommended mostly for the faithful binging on Carax, Mr. X: a Vision of Leos Carax opens this Friday (8/15), in conjunction with the Film Forum’s Carax retrospective.

Carax’s Holy Motors

How does a French lunatic living in Tokyo’s sewers get back to Paris?  Such details hardly matter.  What is important is the subterranean freak seen in Léos Carax’s contribution to the anthology film Tokyo! is actually one of many personas adopted by Monsieur Oscar.  The mysterious performer will travel through Paris for a series of “appointments” that blur the distinction between performance and reality in Carax’s genre-defying Holy Motors (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum, after generating all kinds of critical acclaim and confusion at the recently wrapped 50^th New York Film Festival.

Monsieur Oscar starts his day as a wealthy family man, but after his chauffeur Céline picks him up, he transforms himself into an old beggar woman in the backseat of the limousine.  At his next appointment, he becomes a high tech martial artist for a mo-cap animation production.  After that, Monsieur Oscar heads into the sewers, once again becoming the notorious Merde, who will kidnap a fashion model to recreate the Pieta, by way of King Kong.

As the day progresses, Monsieur Oscar will confront his doppelganger, reunite with a former lover, and die twice, but the show always goes on.  We are given clues that there is indeed an audience for his work, by no less an authority than Michel Piccolli (appearing as a character simply known “The Man with the Birthmark”), but questions like who and how are never answered.  Allusions fly fast and furious while the appointments become increasingly emotional, subversively inviting viewers to invest in episodes they have been conditioned to be skeptical of.

Conceived specifically for Levant, Motors features about eleven unclassifiable performances from its chameleon-like lead.  It is hard to give an exact number because the boundaries between characters are often deliberately porous.  (Of course, Merde can only be Merde.)  Internationally renowned for Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, Edith Scob further complicates audience expectations as Céline, who sort of but not really interacts with Monsieur Oscar in unexpected and intriguing ways.  (She also has a scene with another mask.)

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Motors is its kitchen sink-ness.  One gets the impression that everything Carax dreamed up for the film made its way into the final cut.  As trippy and mind-bending as it all might be, Carax maintains a profound sense of melancholy that stays with viewers far longer than his surreal eccentricities.  Especially cinematic is an episode played atop a shuttered Parisian department store that still bears hints of its former grandeur. In fact, several appointments would stand alone perfectly well as short films, which is an important test for such an episodic film.

Gamesmanship of every sort is afoot in Motors, which will confound or delight, depending on one’s temperament.  Even Monsieur Oscar seems to be a bit of self-referential tomfoolery, considering Carax’s professional moniker is an anagram of Alex Oscar, as he was once known.  Regardless of his trippier flourishes, Motors is one of the most seductive and idiosyncratic excursions into “Paris by night” captured on film.  Wholly original and insidiously moody, Holy Motors is an absolute can’t miss for fans of cult cinema.  Recommended accordingly, it opens this Wednesday (10/17) at New York’s Film Forum.