Yet death too is just a phase, an appearance, sooner or later they walk away from - or are holy motored to the next appointment. Oscar remains a soul in transit, in sacred transport, between moments when he achieves fleeting identity through a relationship. The point is actually spelt out in Kylie Minogue’s song (she another Holy Motored soul) where she asks who they were when they were, who they were. It's a song of deep regret. There is no more identity for them than that they can muster to meet a partner, even briefly. And their versatility in these disguises is formidable. But the point is that they do not simply transform themselves into different people – they are simply a person with endless disguises; that has no basis or reality outside of the limousine. They never quite die; fatally, cannot stay, are finally, eternally alone, astir.
It is a bold poetic or metaphorical conceit, in the Surrealist tradition really. Godard’s Alphaville would surely enter the provenance somewhere, another poem to Paris, as would Malle's Zazie Dans Le Metro. At the same time, Carax’s Paris is never too remote or fantastical, there are episodes among the high rise housing of the suburbs, in the sad hulk that was Le Samaritaine, in the First Arrondissement. The gutted department store also notably overlooks Le Pont-Neuf, the scene of the director’s 1991 feature – Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. Carax’s talent is really for getting the mix just right, for mixing the quotidian with the bizarre, the brutal with the tender, the erotic with the grotesque, the comic with the tragic. It is, most assuredly, a masterpiece.
