Movie Review: 'Annette' Starring Adam Driver

Annette is a masterwork. Director Leos Carax takes the audience into his hands and takes us on a fantastical journey, a strange and magnificent journey of sight and sound. The beauty of music and the beast of hubristic ego slammed together in a story of movies, music, romance, sex, and all that such things entail. Starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, with music from the duo known as Sparks, Annette is a towering, forceful hurricane of image and emotion.

The plot of Annette, such as it is, follows a comedian named Henry McHenry and his doomed romance with an opera diva named Ann. Beauty and the Beast personified, Henry even calls his stand up performance, ‘The Ape of God,’ as a not so subtle underline of his nature, an animalistic Id constantly in search of something to quell his aching existential ennui. Ann meanwhile, is our soft and warm beauty, a fragile flower who dies for our sins night after night to save our souls on the stage.

It’s a media bonanza when the opera diva marries the comedy bad boy and their life is endlessly chronicled by paparazzi and entertainment media in general. And the two are madly in love, they even sing a song about how ‘We Love Each Other, So Much.’ Their love making is heated and passionate and their private moments indicate a deep well of love for each other. But there are sinister forces gathering, forces that will come to the fore as Henry’s true nature is slowly revealed.

The two have a child and name her Annette but tragedy will not allow for Ann to spend much time with her beautiful baby. I won’t spoil what happens, I want you to experience Annette for yourself. I will tell you that Annette goes on to become a worldwide phenomenon in her own right when Henry learns that before she could even walk, she can sing and sing beautifully. From there she becomes the focus of worldwide attention as she tours the globe with Henry and his conductor friend, played by Simon Helberg.

That’s all for the plot, all I will say is that murder and grand guignol emotions are part of the fabric of Annette. One of the aspects that will divide audiences is the fact that Annette herself is a literal prop in the movie, specifically, a wooden puppet instead of a baby. If that idea is jarring to you or you can’t expect yourself to treat that fact with seriousness, Annette may not be for you. Director Leos Carax truly doesn’t care if you buy in, Annette is as much about the feel of grand emotions and heightened metaphors as it is about a story you can invest in emotionally.

Staging is very specific in Annette, from the first moment, Carax wants you to know that you are watching something artificial, intentionally presented as stagy and big, Broadway style emotions and belt it to the back of the room intensity, an artificiality intended to magnify and amplify the genuine emotions he intends to evoke. The film starts on Carax himself with his back to the camera as he sits in a recording studio.

Carax asks the band in the booth, can we start? And the band, Sparks, who co-wrote all of the music in Annette, begin to sing “Can We Start” as they walk out the studio trailed by back up singers and meet up with the stars of the film as the song goes on to explain that the movie is about the start. This is a deeply meta moment and it sets the tone for the audience, either you are along for this journey or you are going to be deeply unsettled and annoyed throughout.

Myself, I reveled in every fourth wall breaking, convention busting moment of this strange and brilliant opening song. It’s desperately up its own backside but it is so bold and different that the navel-gazing aspect didn’t put me off in the slightest. It also helps that the song is brilliant, a driving, pop rocker with a good hook, belted with passion by deeply committed performers. As the opening song came to an end I knew I was in for something strange and brilliant.

The music of Annette is utterly brilliant, driving melodies, dirges, operatic blasts, all grounded in the strange art-pop of Sparks. Adam Driver may not be a natural singer but he performs with vehement energy, his presence makes up for whatever is lacking in his vocals. Cotillard meanwhile has a gorgeous voice and the fact that both performed their songs live on set, rather than pre-record and acting to the playback, gives the movie a life that it might otherwise lack.

Annette is divisive and I sympathize with those who find it obtuse or too weird. I will only advise you that obtuse and weird is intended. Leos Carax is playing with film and musical form. He’s reaching for big, grand emotions but doing so while defying the typicalities of a Hollywood musical. Either you will find yourself won over by Carax and his experiment in Hollywood satire and the movie musical or you will find it desperately off putting.

Annette had a limited theatrical run and is now available to Amazon Prime subscribers.