Movie Review : Annette (2021)

Oct 22

Oct 22 Movie Review : Annette (2021)

Financing a movie in 2021 is a huge fucking risk. With audiences split between the great television renaissance and a COVID-19 induced enthusiasm for the great outdoors, making your money back is a bet. I have no idea who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to finance a movie like Annette, but the fact alone that it exists made it interesting to me. Why would anyone sane watch a musical in 2021? I watched myself it to try and answer that question.

Annette is a two and a half hours musical about a celebrity couple: comedian Henry McHenry (postmodern heartthrob Adam Driver) and opera singer Ann Desfranoux (Marion Cotillard). They live a tumultuous romance together and give birth to a daughter named Annette (a fucking wooden puppet). The little girl changes everything in their lives like a child changes everything in any parents’ life. But she also sings like an angel for some reason.

What the fuck is going on in this movie?

Glad you asked. Because Annette is a rather telegraphic drama if you remove the fact that everybody’s singing all the fucking time. One could argue it’s a modern retelling of a classic tragedy where success and status crush otherwise heroic figures from within. I don’t think Henry McHenry is a classic hero (because he’s kind of an asshole, really) but he occupies contemporary heroic functions as the “truth teller”. The angry, mean spirited court jester.

A man both lionized and criticized for his discourse in these turbulent times. There are a lot of them today: Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K, Joe Rogan, Bill Burr, etc. But why does he sings, right? Everybody sings all the time in Annette, like in Les Misérables. Director Leos Carax uses classic form in order to investigate contemporary issues like misogyny and domestic violence, which is neat. It creates distance and helps understanding things for what they are.

It’s also fun and colorful to break from reality to sing a song and I know Leos Carax is interested in these breaks from reality. There’s a lot of them in his previous movies like Pola X and Holy Motors, which is basically two hours of whatever the hell is going on in the world when no one’s watching. Reality can be this weird, incongruous place when you’re given the luxury not to engage with it. There’s a good example of that in the scenes where Henry performs.

That’s the thing about this movie. Henry, Ann and ultimately Annette are constantly performing. This is another reason for the singing. If they aren’t performing, they don’t have any kind of sway on the world. Any kind of sway on us. Adam Driver does a particularly good job with his body language at showing how heavy it lies on his shoulders. Performance in Annette is both a snake charmer-like control device and a super power.

Say what you want about it, but it’s crazy how deliberate and orchestrated our relationship to charismatic figures is when you’re looking at it from an disinvested eye. It’s a little jarring too. Leos Carax’s movies deconstruct reality in a way where you don’t simply learn from it, but you’re also a witness to it in a shitty, powerless way. I believe this is Carax’s ultimate gift as a filmmaker: the ability of turning just about everything into a freakin’ spectacle.

What about the fucking puppet?

This is also weird, right? Why do Henry and Ann give birth to a wooden puppet? I believe this is the very clever part of Annette. The puppet is a metacommentary on how Henry treats people in his life. Especially women. Puppets he either controls or cuts the strings from. He’s an evil Gepetto: a puppetmaker who can’t beat to witness his creation break from his grasp. That point is explored rather convincingly in Annette. It is the story of a bitter god.

So why did the movie left me with such a “meh” feeling? I don’t know. Maybe it felt a little too on-the-nose? The classic, Shakespearean tragedy angle is played very heavily and it takes its sweet fucking time to arrive at a foregone conclusion. Leos Carax’s movies are definitely and assumedly style over substance and Annette is not an exception to the rules. It’s weird for the sake of being weird and it’s blunt for the sake of being blunt. Haters be damned.

Is Annette a good movie? Sort of. Not really. It’s a clever and colorful movie that isn’t nearly as clever and colorful as it thinks it is? It’s on brand with my overall experience of Leos Carax movies. They are playful and not revolutionary even if sometimes they tackle revolutionary issues. It’s unpleasant in a subdued way, like you’re being scolded about something you weren’t even aware about by a smart friend who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.