By: Andrew Wing
Annette is a 2021 musical romantic drama film directed by French director Leos Carax in his English-language debut. Carax co-wrote the screenplay for the film with brothers Ron Mael and Russell Mael of the band Sparks, an American pop-rock duo that have been together for more than 50 years. The story of Annette also comes from the Mael brothers and their band did all of the music and the songs in the film. The plot follows a stand-up comedian, Henry McHenry (Adam Driver), and his opera singer wife, Ann Defrasnoux (Marion Cotillard), and how their lives are changed when they have their first child, Annette (Devyn McDowell). Simon Helberg also stars in the film in a supporting role as “The Accompanist”.
Annette was released in Carax’s native country of France on July 7, 2021 by UGC Distribution, which was actually a day after it premiered as the opening film at the celebrated 2021 Cannes Film Festival where Carax won for Best Director and the Mael brothers won the Cannes Soundtrack Award. Annette was released in the United States in a limited release on August 6, 2021, prior to being released to digital streaming on Amazon Prime Video on August 20, 2021.
THE GOOD
Before diving into this review, I got to get something out of the way and that would be that Adam Driver is one of my favorite actors to watch on the big screen. As a huge fan of Star Wars, my introduction to Driver came in the form of him as one of the best cinematic villains of all-time in my opinion, Kylo Ren. Since then, my fandom for him has only grown more after seeing his performances in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018) in which he earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the Academy Awards, and obviously in Noah Baumbach’s amazing drama film, Marriage Story (2019) for which he earned his first of hopefully many Best Actor nominations. So yeah, if you haven’t been able to tell thus far, I am probably his biggest fan and I didn’t think twice about checking this movie out once I found out that he was in the lead role.
As for Driver’s performance in Annette, and I swear this isn’t just me gassing up my guy, but he is absolutely amazing in this. Marion Cotillard and Simon Helberg are very good in this, but there is no debating that this is really Adam Driver’s show here. His range as an actor is so freaking impressive because he can really do it all and with Annette, he plays a comedian, Henry McHenry. With his character being a comedian, he will certainly give you a couple laughs as you get to know his character, but as the story goes on you learn that his character is this toxic guy who struggles to love and he kills it in every aspect. I think what made Driver’s performance stand out despite the strangeness of the film is that he is able to match the true insanity that this movie is with the intensity of his acting. Every scene he is in, you can see how committed he is to playing the role perfectly. His performance made me buy into the movie as a whole and you got to give it up for the guy because the man can act.
With any movie I review, I always like to do some background research on the director and take a look at their filmography and see how successful their movies have been in the past. When it comes to this director, Leos Carax, I really didn’t know much about him other than the fact that he is French, as are his movies, and that his magnum opus is Holy Motors (2012). As I did more research on him, I found out that Annette would be his first feature film since Holy Motors in 2012 so this movie was gaining a ton of buzz, and also that when it comes to his filmmaking, he is noted for his poetic style and his tortured depictions of love which are both very evident throughout the entire film. With all that said, I have to say I was pretty impressed with his direction of this movie and after watching it, it is no surprise at all that he won Best Director at Cannes for this. As crazy as Annette was, I have so much admiration for how he ultimately put this production together. It was a really beautiful movie to look at, and it seemed to me that Carax didn’t care much for the audience being able to connect with and follow this movie, but that he was more trying to drop the viewer’s jaw and raise eyebrows and he did just that with this movie.
Lastly, with this being a musical, I have to discuss the music in the film. The soundtrack was done completely by the Sparks band (Mael brothers, Ron did the keyboards, and Russell was the vocals). They wrote all the songs, composed the whole thing, and I loved the rock opera elements every song had to it. The brothers’ unique style was a perfect match with Leos Carax’s filmmaking as both the music and the filmmaking were truly bonkers. Most of the highlights of the film were truthfully those big musical moments, specifically the original song that served as the opening to the film “So May We Start”, which I absolutely loved and have been singing to myself over and over again since I watched it.
THE BAD
As much as I enjoyed the film, there is no denying that this movie has its flaws. For starters, the movie truly is nuts. It is a really difficult movie to wrap your head around and it was a lot to take in in one viewing without a doubt. As much as I would love to go back and watch this again to try and understand the entire thing better, I probably won’t because of how long it is.
140 minutes is way too long for a movie like this. Its length made it very hard as a viewer to tell where I was in the film’s ever-evolving plot. Even if you are like me and feel like you have a pretty good understanding of what is going on with the plot, I promise you that you will still find yourself asking questions such as “what is this movie trying to communicate to me?” or simply, “why is it so weird?”. And as for it being a musical, throughout the film there are times where it feels like it is drifting back and forth between being a musical and not. Sometimes the characters are doing this combination of talking/singing and I didn’t love that and it honestly felt a little off putting at times.
There is also a fair share of disturbing and head-scratching scenes throughout the film. For example, and trust me this isn’t a spoiler, but the baby Annette is not a real baby, it is instead a wooden marionette puppet. I have no idea what they were going for with that, but it had me absolutely lost for a couple of scenes. With the child being a puppet, it made an already wacky movie even more challenging to take seriously. It tied into the movie as a whole because I felt that the ridiculous nature of the film made it so hard for me to become emotionally invested in these character’s journeys as I would have liked to be.
I don’t know what more to say, it certainly is a very challenging movie to get a grasp on and there is no doubt in my mind that it will be an extremely divisive movie for audiences. Lastly, for those like myself who were hoping for this movie to get some awards love prior to watching, you can throw that right out the window. There is no possible way this movie is going to get any nominations, maybe for original song, but even Driver’s performance is a longshot with how weird the movie is. At the end of the day, this just isn’t a movie made for the Academy.
THE VERDICT
From the mind of French director Leos Carax comes Annette. The director’s first English-language feature film comes in the form of a musical drama that is unlike any musical or any movie for that matter that I have ever seen. Despite the craziness that this movie is, I really admired Carax’s vision and still had a lot of fun watching it, thanks in large part to yet another incredibly provocative performance from Adam Driver.
This movie is definitely worth a shot checking out and I would love to hear your thoughts, whether you love it or hate it. Just a warning though, if you do go ahead and decide to check it out, prepare to fully commit to the absurd because it is a wild ride.
TED TAKES RATING - 7.5/10
Annette is now streaming on Prime Video. Check out the latest trailer below.