I wish I can summon the  enthusiasm others have for Leos Carax's
_Holy Motors_, the only film I managed to see in New York.  He
has always been an ingenius, innovative director, and it may be
churlish to ask him to exercise more discipline.  Nevertheless,
_Holy Motors_ simply has too many ideas, no doubt because of Carax'
extended enforced hiatus from feature-film making.  And it does not
have an organizing principle behind it, unlike _Pola X_ which is
loosely based on Melville(if memory serves).  The main operating
principle seems to be that this is a movie and so anything goes
(playing with cinematic conventions).  This is something Carax's
earlier fims do too, but they have such bubbling romanticism;
the overall elegiac tone and genre-subverting playfulness doesn't
somehow seem to mix.  It is never boring to watch Dennis Lavant,
who has added tremendous depth to his craft.  I must say that by
far the most genuinely moving moment of the film is the beginning
of the end credits, which pays tribute to the late Yekaterina
Golubeva (_I Can't Sleep_, _L'Intrus_, _Pola X_), probably Carax's
one-time companion.  By the way, I never found out what she died
of -- seems very young at 45.  I always suspect suicide, but
people do die of diseases and accidents at that age; a friend of
mine just did.  In _Holy Motors_, the characters seem to be able
to regularly cheat death and treat the whole film as a joke.  A
"science fiction" is supposed to be able to invent new rules but
should stick by them, and Carax simply doesn't.