Entre unheimlich et abjection : instabilité identitaire et intertextualité dans Holy Motors de Leos Carax

Abstract

In this article, I examine the interplay between the unheimlich (the uncanny) and the abject in Leos Carax‘s film Holy Motors (2012). While the two phenomena seem at first to be nearly synonymous, Kristeva, in Powers of Horror, emphasizes that abjection is fundamentally different from the strange familiarity theorized by Freud in 1919. However, I contend that the anxiety and alienation that this anarchic and sometimes violent film provokes in the spectator stems from both states. I begin by showing how Carax destabilises the spectator by representing the identity of the main character, M. Oscar, as unreliable throughout the film. I then analyse two specific episodes from Holy Motors, one that looks to affirm the spectator‘s dissociation from M. Oscar through the use of starkly abject elements, and the other that increases the spectator‘s uncertainty with regards to M. Oscar‘s true identity by creating a heightened sensation of unheimlich. Finally, I will show how a specific intertextual reference to the horror film Les yeux sans visage (Georges Franju 1959), a film that also plays on both the abject and the uncanny, places the spectator in a state of radical alienation from the fictional universe of the film.