You Probably Haven’t Seen Anything Like ‘Annette’ This Year
I’m so used to reviewing comic book movies and big-budget Hollywood productions that it can feel a little odd to sit down and try to review a movie like Annette. It’s weird, it’s a musical, it’s over two hours long, and it features a marionette as a main character. It’s about as far from a Marvel movie as you can get. It’s such a sharp turn from most of the movies and streaming shows that are coming out now that it can be a bit jarring at first, but by the end, I found myself really getting into it.
Annette is a rock opera about edgy standup comedian Henry McHenry (Adam Driver) and glamorous opera singer Ann Desfranoux (Marion Cotillard). We enter the story after the unlikely couple has already fallen in love and we see the way they navigate fame and their respective art forms, Henry being low art and Ann being high art. Henry compels people to laugh, Ann compels people to feel deeply—she moves them in a way Henry begins to resent. They marry and have a daughter, Annette, and then everything starts to fall apart to the music of Russell and Ron Mael, a.k.a. Sparks.
I’m not familiar with the work of director Leos Carax, so I didn’t have much to go on beyond the surreal trailer and the intrigue of seeing someone like Driver in a musical. Both he and Cotillard sing live and there’s something oddly appealing about the emotion conveyed by people who are not professional singers making their way through the songs. This is definitely not a traditional musical and people looking for Singin’ in the Rain or even something more recent like La La Land are in for a culture shock. The music serves a purpose and often explicitly narrates a scene, but there’s a surreal and dreamy quality to the accompanying visuals that makes for a very different experience than what you might think of when someone says “musical”.
The cast is very strong with a surprisingly great performance from Simon Helberg, who is most known for The Big Bang Theory. Cotillard is impressive and brings a wide-eyed innocence to Ann that puts her in direct contrast to Driver’s intensity, but there’s no question that Driver is the one to watch here. At this point, I’m pretty convinced he could do just about anything. There’s not a frame of his performance that isn’t incredibly engaging. Early on, it’s clear he’s just going for it, fully committing and elevating every scene. Once the story turns darker, he really starts to shine and he gives full head-to-toe acting that incorporates everything from subtle facial expressions to his unique bodily movement that other actors just don’t seem to be able to channel to his level.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to like Annette at first. It felt too off-the-beaten-path and my brain wasn’t ready to take in a movie that was this different. But after a little while, I found myself getting progressively engaged in the performances and visuals, and by the final scene, I was completely engrossed. So if you check out the film in the theaters or when it hits Prime Video later this month, give yourself time to really get absorbed before you make a judgement call on this one.
