{"id":16941,"date":"2021-08-05T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=16941"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:14:15","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:14:15","slug":"review-annette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-annette\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Annette<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cLadies and gentlemen, we now ask for your complete attention,\u201d begins the announcement that opens Leos Carax\u2019s Annette<\/em>, and as the booming voice proceeds to give us our instructions for consuming the picture to come, it\u2019s clear that we\u2019re in for something well outside the norm. That passage seems like something out of a Monty Python movie (Holy Grail<\/em>, to be specific); we then seem to move into some kind of a rock documentary, as we find Sparks<\/a> \u2013 who wrote and perform the film\u2019s many, many songs \u2013 in the studio. \u201cSo, may we start?\u201d they sing playfully, and now sooner have they begun singing than they stroll right out of the studio, the picture\u2019s stars and supporting players joining them on the way out to the street, the lot of them strutting and singing and having a ball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And at that early point, I was basically all in on Annette, <\/em>a delightfully daft mish-mash of love story, vernacular opera, show-biz parable, and free-floating weirdness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard are Henry and Ann, the lovers at the story\u2019s center, and they\u2019re  a study in contrasts \u2013 opposites attract and all that. He\u2019s gangly and she\u2019s petite, he has flowing locks and she has a Jean Seberg cut, he\u2019s low culture and she\u2019s high; he\u2019s a stand-up comic and performance artist of some notoriety, while she\u2019s an opera singer of great renown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We join their romance in progress, in a honeymoon phase of intensity and lust (including, yes, a sex scene that is such a matter-of-fact throwaway that the hubbub surrounding it out of Cannes is frankly embarrassing for those involved). Soon, they have a baby daughter, Annette \u2013 first seen as a doll (in what this viewer took as a sly dig at Clint Eastwood<\/a>), but then as a puppet, an old-fashioned one, with overly artificial features and big hinges where the joints would be. The puppet is, in a way, a metaphor for the entire film; it sounds utterly insane, and it shouldn\u2019t work at all, and it certainly calls attention to itself in a way that prevents the audience from fully engaging with it, and yet\u2026 And yet, it\u2019s hauntingly effective, more, perhaps, than conventional techniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not long after Annette\u2019s arrival, voices on the soundtrack warn, \u201cSomething\u2019s about to break \/ but it isn\u2019t clear,\u201d and (as redundant as this may sound), that\u2019s when things really<\/em> start to get strange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Driver is credited as a producer, and it\u2019s easy to see why \u2013 this is the kind of role many any actor would give up a limb to play. In a long, strange, tricky scene, we see Henry losing his grasp on his audience, his persona, and maybe himself in front of a Vegas audience, and after that he comes to fancy himself a Lenny Bruce type, with the kind of baggage that entails. It\u2019s a dark, brooding character, and Driver is unafraid to dip into its valleys; late in the picture, he has a close-up, of Henry watching and grinning with a combination of pride and panic, that\u2019s some of the best acting he\u2019s ever done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cotillard, sadly, has much less of a character to play; her primary character trait seems to be her consumption of apples, which is a little on the nose, even for a rock musical. So it goes in male-penned romances; the Maels are, unsurprisingly, more comfortable crafting songs than characterizations, and Carax ingeniously stages several of their numbers (a police interrogation sequence is a marvel, and Simon Helberg\u2019s little soliloquy, performed as he conducts an orchestra, is a brilliant little interlude) and finds several tiny touches, like the expanding birthmark on Driver\u2019s face, to maintain visual interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s ultimately a successful marriage of styles and sensibilities. You know that sense of embarrassing goofiness that always seems to take over when people start singing in modern movies? Carax loves<\/em> that. He leans into it, and Sparks\u2019 songs lend themselves to his approach; there\u2019s something delicious about the simplicity of a big love ballad that mostly consists of them singing \u201cWe love each other so much\u201d over and over again. Those songs say<\/em> more, sure. But that\u2019s what they all boil down to, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Annette<\/em> is, make no mistake about it, A Lot \u2013 defiantly, unapologetically A Lot, over the top in its operatic emotions and baroque style, and its far-flung pieces don\u2019t always smash together successfully. But we\u2019re living in what maybe the most timid moviemaking period of my lifetime, and this kind of shoot-the-works storytelling is more than welcome. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A-<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

“Annette” is out Friday in theaters and on Amazon Prime Video August 20th.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n