Kylie, Eva Mendes and Mr Merde in Carax's Holy motors at Cannes

Carax is the man who made Les Amants du pont neuf (The Lovers on the bridge) in 1991 when he was about 30. It did better with the critics than with the general public 21 years ago.

Cannes 2012

Holy motors is a film full of imagination which runs through the whole range of emotions via a central character, Mr Oscar, played by French stage and screen actor Denis Lavant.

Actually Lavant plays 11 characters as he’s driven around by Céline, played by a glamourous, elegant, Edith Scob, in a white stretch limousine which is also his mobile dressing-room.

He conveys a vision of the world which is not always the prettiest. And he touches on cinema, love, death and beauty.

Who else would have dreamt up a rousing and ultimately comic scene in which Lavant leads a band of accordion players around the inside of an empty church?

Who’d have thought of having Australian singer Kylie Minogue belt out a song in stage musical style on the site of La Samaritaine, the former department store with its view over Paris's Pont Neuf bridge?

Carax’s Holy motors is a cascade of surprises, including an appearance from actress Eva Mendes as a stunned and stunning muse in a cemetery in the Mr Merde (Mr Shit) scene.

Like Alain Resnais’s entry in the Cannes Film Festival this year, Vous n’avez encore rien vu, theatre and cinema combine their talents and their magic.