Directed by:
Leos CaraxCinematography:
Caroline ChampetierCast:
Adam Driver, Marion Cotillard, Simon Helberg, Rebecca Dyson-Smith, Rila Fukushima, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, Ron Mael, Russell Mael, Kiko Mizuhara (more)Plots(1)
An epic musical on the pitfalls of love, fame and fortune from visionary filmmaker Leos Carax, starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard. The glamorous lives of a seemingly perfect celebrity couple - a provocative stand-up comedian and an internationally renowned opera singer - take an unexpected turn when their daughter Annette is born with a mysterious gift. An unabashedly unique and unforgettable spectacle, this Cannes Best Director prize winner co-stars Simon Helberg and features an original story and music by Sparks, one of pop's best-loved and most influential cult bands. (MUBI)
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Reviews (7)
This was my first encounter with this director, and I have to say, Annette is a wild ride. It's not filled with grotesque or over-the-top nastiness like some other weird films, but it’s still totally insane. Adam Driver and Simon Helberg give performances that are completely indulgent, while Marion Cotillard just coasts along, remaining as captivating as ever. The plot is simple and straightforward, but the theatrical delivery of the lines doesn’t make it easy for the audience. The visuals are striking, and the musical interludes, though repetitive, add an interesting layer. The recurring lyrical themes act like refrains, which was the least of my issues compared to the overall very peculiar execution.
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This is a film that tries to kill a man to save him. Nobody can rip a man's eyes out of his head and turn them inside out like Carax. You stare into the abyss and it stares into you. For me, it is a surprisingly intimate film about pain, self-deception and fatherhood, about the illusions in which we lose ourselves, and also about the fact that film as the ultimate illusion can sometimes tear off all masks. Rationality is overrated, imagination will save the world. Or at least give it a decent funeral.
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The unusual musical Annette, adapted from the stage production, is a brilliantly crafted tragic romance, both cinematically and musically, and it also works well as a sharp critique of the artificial world of show business, which leaves no room for true love. It is certainly not a movie that will appeal to the masses, but it will certainly find an audience. Fans of the band Sparks and of Adam Driver, who is here in top acting form, will be over the moon (75%)
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The first half is absolutely stunning and captivating; it loses a bit of momentum in the middle, but the final act is brilliant once again. We haven't seen a musical this unique in a long time, featuring a meticulously crafted visual style and an electrifying performance by Adam Driver. For many, it might be too unconventional and exhausting, but it's not as intensely arty as some might fear. It was a bit of a gamble for me, but I'm thrilled that Annette was my return to the cinema after nearly a 10-month hiatus.
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Neo-Baroque lost its neo and only baroque remained, whose weight of gilded encumbrance may have been another bead in the rosary of genre-ironic creations of cinéma du look, but the repetition of the prayer mantra reveals itself here as a doubly double-edged sword, which Carax cut himself with this time: by repeating the form, its true power was diluted, the power of negation through a convention-incompatible form, to such an extent that the negation of negation (= form) evoked simple mathematics - multiplying two minuses gives us a plus, which is nothing but the valorization of the content itself. And in the content, I saw nothing but convention, to which only a different narrative vector and occasionally a comedic tone could not suffice to break free from it. Symptomatically, here, the undermining and playing with genre forms (musical, melodrama, fairy tale, etc.) is nothing more than something we have already seen in other more commercial works because such "postmodernity" has long been privatized by Hollywood. Hollywood has finally caught up with and absorbed Carax like a depth that is truly dangerous to look into because, from this perspective, cinéma du look can turn into cinéma du don't look. Neo-baroque always started in apparent kitschy sweetness only to turn bitter, but this transition was (in the best works) caused precisely by the inversion of conventions of given forms, while when we want to repeat this Neo-baroque dramatic arc only on the level of content, we always end up with nothing but convention sneaking in through the back door. Perhaps the transformation of the puppet into a living being was supposed to be an interpretive indication of the author's mise en abyme, with which Carax wanted to convince the viewer at the last moment that his film is not just a bloodless marionette swallowing the budget, but a work containing life, yet even in this final attempt (which is nothing other than a replication of Hollywood desires), he failed.
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