La difficile tâche du corps ressuscité dans Holy Motors de Leos Carax. Une poésie baroque des organes au cinéma.
La difficile tâche du corps ressuscité dans Holy Motors de Leos Carax. Une poésie baroque des organes au cinéma.

Summary/Abstract: One of the most significant aspects of Leos Carax’s film Holly Motors is the “baroque” representation of the human body. Through the monstrous bodies imagined in the spirit of the cruel aesthetics of the Belle Epoque, Carax offers a new perspective upon the human corporeality. The aim of this paper is to explore the connection between space and a pulsating chain of physical hypostases in Carax’s work. I will analyze the manner in which the ever changing body is related to a specific setting and how it contributes to the construction of a poetics of space. The French director restructures the Darwinian evolution theory and founds an inverted history of the body, in a dramatized chronology. Referring to a decadent era of the old motors, Carax imposes a repeated resurrection of the human flesh and blood, an idea which appears at the end of each episode of his film. I will try to demonstrate that Carax’s deconstructed human body is the recipient of space changing, an aspect that is at the heart of his poetic film and which proves its Nouvelle Vague’s inherited qualities. I also claim the existence of a connection between deconstructed perceptions and narrative development in a story that attempts to express the tragedy of fading technological entities through a fragmented and therefore frightening tragic poem about postmodern mankind.

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