Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

This film has had so much hype we felt we just "had to have it, darling!" It starts with a man (Carax) waking up in bed and going through a hidden door into... a movie theatre. Is the film, then,
his dream, or an homage to all films?

We follow the hero/star, Oscar (played, as always in Carax movies by Denis Lavant) as he is driven around Paris in an enormous limousine by his chauffeur Céline (Edith Scob), taking him to various assignments (or film parts?). He is continually changing roles (he has a makeup table in the car), from a concerned father to a beggarwoman, an old man on his deathbed, to an anarchic beast who kidnaps Eva Mendes from a glamour shoot in a cemetery.

Leos Carax, the director, has only made 5 full films (including 'Les amants du Pont-neuf' and 'Pola X'), but has always been an enigma: 'Leos Carax...has met the challenge of filming the visions dancing and dueling inside his own internally exploding head. Love him or hate him, Carax does Carax brilliantly' - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone. Here he takes his favourite star (Lavant) and gives him two hours to show his worth; surely Oscar must put him in line for an Oscar?