ANNETTE: Star Dream Love Song": Never stare into the abyss

Following the " Phantom of the Flower City", after nearly ten years of violation, the French ghost director Leo Kaho , who has released a new work again , co-wrote the screenplay with the Sparks Orchestra, combining talk shows, operas, musicals and other forms to create an ultimate audio-visual feast. Starring actors such as "Marriage Story" Adam Trevor and "Rose Life" Mary Yong Cortia , the plot describes talk show superstar Henry and opera diva Ann. After the two fell in love, their careers developed after marriage. The gap has been overcome, and the marriage relationship has been put to the test. Then the daughter was born, which caused a storm for the two of them. ANNETTE : A Dream Love Song is the first English-language film and musical film directed by Leo Kaho. Not only was it selected for the 2021 Cannes Film Festival Opening Film and Competition, but it also won two awards including Best Director and Best Score.

"Leo Caho-style" grotesque love

In Leo Caho's films, the talk of love is always a bit peculiar and subtle, while the style of his films is quite poetic, as is the case with " Lovers in New Bridge ." The story describes a woman who likes to paint but suffers from serious eye problems. Faced with the possibility of blindness, she runs away from home to the oldest "Pont Nouveau" on the Seine in Paris, where she meets a homeless man who breathes fire. The lonely two people gradually developed close feelings because of their dependence on each other. The two people with far different backgrounds fell in love with each other like this. But the underpass was covered with the woman's missing person notice, but the man did an irreversible act because he was afraid of losing her. Director Leo Kaho delicately presents paranoia, passion and greed in love relationships, and explores the nature of love. Leo Kaho, who has always liked to show his ideas in his works, is different from his previous works. "ANNETTE: Star Dream Love Song" plays with form and narrative techniques, combining talk shows, opera, puppets, projection technology, and aerial photography in the film. Elements such as machines, even breaking the boundary with the audience, is a film with a very high experimental nature. However, after stripping the cocoons, under this form, the story revolves around a man's ambivalence about love and marriage, and also talks about human greed, but also because of the role's occupation in the film, it discusses more about being a creator. .

"I kill the audience, and you die for the audience."

Henry, played by Adam Trevor, is a talk show superstar known as "God's Ape," and Ann, played by Mary Wing Cortia, is a consummate opera diva. When Ann asked Henry how the performance was, Henry replied:

"I killed them, and you died for them."

At this point, you can feel that although the two protagonists are leaders in their respective fields, they have different mentalities in the face of creation. As a talk show superstar, Henry's creative pressure is enormous. "Humor" itself is a difficult art. Faced with the situation of the audience asking for something, he can only constantly think about how to present the performance, and less Opportunity to look inside yourself. But Ann, who is an opera diva, is in a completely different situation. She only needs to present the script perfectly, and the audience will pay for it. Under the eyes of the media and the outside world, the difference between the two is increasing day by day, and it has also planted the seeds of unhappy marriages in the future. "ANNETTE: Star Dream Love Song" is constantly reported by the media, leading the audience to see the marriage and career development between Henry and Ann. The presentation method is also very ironic, which can be reminiscent of Bruno Dumont 's "The Queen of France" , pointing directly at all the ugliness manipulated by the French news media. Even if it was Henry who ruined the marriage, on the whole, is the pressure from public opinion and the news media an accomplice?

The "materialized" wooden doll

Leo Kaho used many different types of artistic performances in "ANNETTE: Star Dream Love Song", and based on the musical film, it jumped out of the past frame. Among them, the technique of presenting her daughter Annette with puppet art adds a lot of grotesque atmosphere, even a little weird. But at the end, Annette transforms into a human, and in a conversation with her father Henry, brings out the theme of the whole film:

"Don't look into the abyss."

Annette, who existed to maintain the marriage between the two, changed from a "materialized" wooden doll to a human form at the end, and had a final conversation with her father Henry to explore where Henry's greed came from. And "Don't look into the abyss." Can this sentence also be regarded as director Leo Kaho's propaganda to himself?

To sum up, "ANNETTE: Star Dream Love Song" is undoubtedly a very special musical film. Although the plot is simple, it uses many different forms of techniques, which greatly satisfies the audio-visual effect of this film, allowing viewers to ignore The flaws in the story, focus only on Leo Caho's formal aesthetics. In the final scene, the actors and staff who participated in the film appeared, echoing the beginning of the film. Leo Kaho told the audience:

"It's just a game after all."