9 Confusing Films Where Absolutely Nobody Knew What Was Going On

2. Holy Motors

Leos Carax's Holy Motors is a hilarious if highly challenging work of cinema, one which revolves around Denis Lavant's Mr. Oscar, a man who takes on several eccentric roles over the course of the movie, the reason of which is never really explained. Oscar spends much of the movie riding in a limo, and his "job" appears to be to play a host of different characters, often using make-up and amusing get-ups to disguise himself. His characters include an old female beggar, a guy in a motion capture suit getting kinky with his co-star, and easily most memorably, Monsieur Merde, a flower-eating lunatic who ends up kidnapping Eva Mendes. Yes, you read that right. Then Oscar takes on a number of more violent roles, as he has to take down people who look very much like himself. Later on, he meets an old acquaintance, Eva (Kylie Minogue) who appears to work in the same profession as himself, and after a brief song number, she jumps to her death. His final assignment appears to portray him as a family man, but soon enough it becomes clear that his family are chimpanzees. But that's not even the end of it: the limo then ends up back at the Holy Motors garage, and the limos begin talking to each other, worried that they are becoming old relics... Theories: In many ways, it seems like Holy Motors is a satire of contemporary storytelling, particularly in the world of cinema (given how an establishing scene takes place in a cinema), and how we take on different roles throughout our lives. The famously vague Carax meanwhile said in an interview with IndieWire that, "It's trying to have the whole range of human experience in a day." The movie is about life and death, family and love, and though it might take on these ideas in a relatively abstract, some might say messy way, it encapsulates them all, and so the director's comments seem to hold water. As for the talking limos? Who knows...