Holy Motors

French art house director Leos Carax stays true to form with his first feature since the controversial Pola X in 1999. Once more combining bouts of tedium and pretentious excess with fabulously surreal images and grandiose spasms of inspiration, this metaphysical head-scratcher presents a journey through one man's life cycle. Denis Lavant plays the cypher of eclectic human experience, travelling by limousine between such personas as a beggar woman, an assassin and his quarry, a motion-capture specialist and the same gargoyle creature seen in Carax's contribution to the 2008 anthology movie Tokyo!. Complete with an accordion intermission, Eva Mendes in a burqa, chauffeur Edith Scob referencing her classic Eyes without a Face role and air stewardess Kylie Minogue warbling a song by the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon, this eccentric rant about technology taking over humanity is a total mess that strains for poetic meaning. Yet it also has enough hypnotic power to carry one's attention through even the clumsiest and obvious passages.