Annette (2021)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Annette (2021) – L. Carax

I really enjoyed Leos Carax’s last film, Holy Motors (2012), which was strenuously weird and full of amazing images. So, I was excited to see his latest, which opened the Cannes Film Festival this year with music/libretto by Sparks and starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, as, respectively, a bad boy performance artist/comedian and an opera singer, who fall in love. It starts well – and weird – with the cast and crew singing the actors/main characters into the story which then diverges to show the separate worlds of Henry McHenry (Driver) and Ann Defrasnoux (Cotillard). We see their acts on stage and their lives offstage. Soon, they are married and have a daughter, Annette, who is played by a wooden marionette. Weird, yes, but the exhilaration of the film starts to dissipate as things take a darker turn when the script engages with #MeToo and domestic violence themes. This is topical and important but rather jarring as we lose the ability to identify with the characters onscreen. To be honest, things started to drag (I looked at my watch and decided that 140 minutes was too long) and I did not feel that the visuals or songs or weirdness compensated for the pacing problems. That said, Driver in particular gives everything he can to the film and the failure overall is not for want of trying.