Holy Motors
Indomina Group | Release Date: October 17, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
85
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Village VoiceSteve EricksonApr 15, 2023
The film itself is filled with a joie de vivre about the possibilities of acting, with Lavant expressing an emotional repertoire from wild humor to great sadness. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayNov 12, 2012
An electrifying, confounding, what-the-hell-just-happened exercise in unbounded imagination, unapologetic theatricality, bravura acting and head-over-heels movie-love. Read full review
100
TimeRichard CorlissOct 25, 2012
It's an exhilarating trip of movie madness and sadness. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumOct 24, 2012
An exhilarating puzzle, one of the grand cinematic eruptions of the year. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirOct 18, 2012
Whatever sense you make (or don't) of the spectacular, hallucinatory Holy Motors, it's the coolest and strangest movie of the year, and once it gets its druglike hooks in your brain, you'll never get them out again. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsMiriam BaleOct 18, 2012
Each episode of director Leos Carax's film perfectly masters the exact tone of a different genre, finding precisely the saddest moment in each of its vignettes. Read full review
100
The PlaylistGabe ToroOct 18, 2012
Holy Motors keeps kicking into a different gear, much like an eternally waking dream. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloOct 17, 2012
It's a glorious dream-epitaph. Read full review
100
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonOct 16, 2012
Unclassifiable, expansive, and breathtaking. Read full review
100
EmpireNick de SemlyenOct 15, 2012
Splashing around in the same mad puddle as Lynch but a good deal funnier, this tale of a man with many faces is an exhilarating, audacious, lunatic rocket-ride. Hop on board. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 15, 2012
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. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterMegan LehmannOct 15, 2012
Exhilarating, opaque, heartbreaking and completely bonkers – French auteur Leos Carax's so-called comeback film, Holy Motors, is a deliciously preposterous piece of filmmaking that appraises life and death and everything in between, reflected in a funhouse mirror. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnOct 17, 2012
There's no doubting that Holy Motors is an ungodly mess of images and moments, some more alluring than others, but it sure leaves a mark. Read full review
90
NPRStephanie ZacharekOct 18, 2012
Holy Motors - exhilarating, mournful and always stunning to look at - makes no sense at all if you have your heart set on narrative comprehensibility or even plain old thematic cohesion. It could almost be a film made in a time before language, a rendering of modern life - or modern lives - as a kind of cinematic cave painting. With songs. And a white stretch limo. And Kylie Minogue. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 16, 2012
It's a gift for moviegoers to have this much freedom, and exhilarating. In Holy Motors you never know where Mr. Carax will take you and you never know what, exactly, you're to do once you're there. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenDec 5, 2012
Holy Motors is as individualistic a movie as you're likely to encounter – both in terms of the filmmaker's intent and the viewer's takeaway. Warmth and humor abide within its every frame but, like Carax's dreamer at the film's outset, you must find the key within yourself that unlocks the mysteries. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenNov 16, 2012
You may be of the opinion that taking in an art film, especially the haute brand that disdains conventional narrative, is like watching paint dry. If so, happy surprise, Holy Motors is definitely the art film for you – it's like watching paint blister. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNov 8, 2012
Lavant is splendid in the film, and he's essentially the entire film - and yet, Holy Motors is somewhat more than a contraption built for a fearless performer. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertNov 7, 2012
Here is a film that is exasperating, frustrating, anarchic and in a constant state of renewal. It's not tame. Some audience members are going to grow very restless. My notion is, few will be bored. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 18, 2012
Holy Motors, fueled by pure feeling, is a dream of a movie you want to get lost in. It's a thing of beauty. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerNov 18, 2012
This is the kind of it-can-mean-whatever-you-want-it-to-mean art film that I usually run from, but Carax is such a prodigiously gifted mesmerist that, if you give way, you're likely to be enfolded in the film's phantasmagoria. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesSheri LindenNov 15, 2012
In Holy Motors Carax insists on our other selves. His daylong ride is a wary celebration, a joyful dirge that's served up in concentrated form by a roving band of accordion players. It's all in a day's work. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzNov 6, 2012
If you're willing to let a movie wash over you and work at what it might mean, you'll love "Holy Motors," Leos Carax's surreal ode to … identity? Movies? Performance?
80
SlateDana StevensOct 20, 2012
Holy Motors, a movie that's beyond weird, and beyond beautiful. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 15, 2012
Holy Motors is typically confounding but on every level that matters a work of unfettered - and liberating - imagination. Read full review
80
Total FilmJames MottramOct 15, 2012
A surreal head-scratcher that'd make Luis Buñuel smile, it may not be perfectly formed, but there's no denying its fierce originality. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezNov 21, 2012
Holy Motors is wild and unfettered and playful - the work of an artist who carries his love of cinema in his bones, and knows how to share that affection with the audience. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 15, 2012
You will look in vain for some definite logic to Holy Motors. You could see it as a metaphor for the actor's life, or a story about the desire to transcend the self. Anything you decide is fine. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisNov 1, 2012
The film has sprung from the mind of the Frenchman Leos Carax and ought to be seen to be believed, on the largest screen you can find, and probably sober, too, since it becomes its own narcotic. Read full review
70
VarietyRob NelsonOct 15, 2012
Audaciously giving itself license to do whatever it wants, Leos Carax's narratively unhinged, beautifully shot and frequently hilarious Holy Motors coheres -- arguably, anyway -- into a vivid jaunt through the auteur's cinematic obsessions. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezOct 15, 2012
Léos Carax's maddening, self-satisfied, though never smug, game of spot-the-reference seems intended only for a particular type of cinephile. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfOct 16, 2012
Holy Motors is aggressively "wild," a puzzle that tweaks the mind but doesn't nourish. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsNov 30, 2012
There are a few beguiling moments in Holy Motors, particularly a martial-arts sequence and an erotic dance while Mr. Oscar is dressed in a motion-capture body suit, but the road between those moments is so strewn with stalled ideas that audiences who care about character and plot are liable to take the exit to a movie that makes sense. Read full review
50
The New YorkerDavid DenbyOct 19, 2012
Holy Motors is full of larks and jolts, but the movie is so self-referential that it's mainly aroused by itself. The audience, though eager to be pleased, is left unsatisfied. [22 Oct. 2012, p.88]
50
New York PostLou LumenickOct 19, 2012
The sort of enigmatic movie that many critics embrace because it's open to endless interpretation. Read full review
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