Annette

I am confused on how I feel about this movie. At times I hated it. At others I was simply fascinated by it. And most interesting to see were the reactions. I've never seen so many people leave the cinema. And at the same time so many of those who did make it to the end be completely flabbergasted once the credits roll. The audience was confused and seemingly expected to see more. Like some Marvel after credits scene explaining or adding something.

The things I hated: In short, at times the movie does seem like a pretentious pseudo-intellectual fart-sniffing contemporary theatre/performance art. The songs.

The things I liked: many things are satirical. And most importantly, the twist at the end grounds the sillyness back to reality and puts it into a new perspective. But also, Adam Driver. The songs.

What an interesting experience overall.

The art pop band Sparks (Ron and Russel Mael), recently featured in Edgar Wright's documentary, The Sparks Brothers, has crafted a bizarre, surreal, and all-too-real film that explores the consequences of fame, child exploitation, male stupidity, and marriage. It's a smart rarity, where the characters mostly communicate in song and nothing is safe, not even love.

Henry (Adam Driver), a successful comedian, loves opera singer, Ann (Marion Cotillard, but fame for both is a deal breaker. You've heard it all before (A Star is Born anyone?), and to some extent the disintegration of their marriage is close to a cliché, but their singing and the lack of haranguing or bitter tirades almost has you thinking they can make it. To those adoring fans on the outside, their union is perfect.

With the entrance of their baby girl, Annette, and Ann's exit, Henry is left to his own devices relying on others to care for her but becoming obsessive about Annette's gifted voice. It doesn't take him long to exploit her talent around the world and for the fates to catch up with him.

Driver is particularly effective as a towering talent (his comedy act is unusually odd and bright), brooding and elusive. Although Cotillard could always carry a picture (La Vie En Rose), this one belongs to Driver, whose character is as charged as his performance.

Special credit must be given to the Sparks bros, who wrote the story and the music, evocative of Brian De Palma's Phantom of Paradise and any Sondheim, and to French director Leos Carax, whose off-center vision helps Annette be a wildly different take on the ravages of fame and the hubris of men.

Slow and eccentric for some, just quirky and insightful for others, this romance is artistically enough for anyone wanting a worthy drama that happens to be a musical.

"Annette" is not a conventional film musical, instead seeming like something you'd see in a black box theater with a small cast playing multiple roles and some not-quite-avant-garde staging.

The visual style crossfades between mundane, (nighttime motorcycle rides, the same winking lights of Los Angeles seen from the foothills of so many films), magical realism (opera stages that become moonlit glades), and abstract. Intentionally absurdist TMZ-style segments introduce new phases of the story.

The music is repetitive and wan, with Adam Driver producing many of the same thin, scratchy falsetto sounds as Hugh Jackman in "Les Mis" Marion Cotillard alternately signing for herself and obviously dubbed.

The vocal lines often remind me of sections of Sondheim, when he uses quasi-tonal, wan phrasing such as in the song "Barcelona." He uses it much more sparingly than this score, which seldom builds into much melody. This, of course, could be intentional. The important repeated bit of song "we love each other so much" might actually be intended to ironically suggest desperation and insufficiency in the emotion.

The story is simple and deals with cardboard cutouts of characters, by design-- which is why Annette herself is so strangely effective.

This is her film, after all, though Driver's Henry McHenry-- an edgy, self-loathing standup comedian-- is the central focus, really.

Simon Helberg-- somewhat reprising his accompanist role from "Florence Foster Jenkins" has some of the more interesting moments of acting, and is the subject of a particularly bravura circular tracking shot that's the real filmmaking highlight of the latter part of the film.

All in all, an impressive, if bewildering, fever dream of film that is not the sum of its parts, and doesn't add up to much, but will enchant you with its visuals and haunt you with its oversimplified plainsong.

This is some very strange movie, but I kind of liked it and stayed interested in how the story would end. Had some very weird decisions and shots in it, but all in all I appreciated the efford and the 'unperfectness' it showed. Also it leaves a lot of space for interpretations. Driver and Cotillard are top-notch and even Helberg fitted in quite well. Drivers 'comedy'-shows were great! All in all I recomment the movie to all arthouse-lovers. If you want to watch a blockbuster, go somewhere else.

I like the main actors here, when I saw the initial trailer some time back I wrote it on my calendar, I was anxious to see it.

It is a very peculiar movie, mostly using the form of singing dialog. A recurring one is the melody "We love each other so much." However as the story moves along we wonder if Driver's stand up comic character really can love anyone.

It is long, I watched it in probably four different sittings, roughly a half-hour each time. I really was entertained by the experimental approach and its emotional extremes. However if you strip it all down it is a plain story. For me the most interesting scene is about 10 minutes from the end, when dad and Annette, now a young girl, do a face-to-face singing number, I was taken aback by how good and with proper emotion the young girl's singing and acting was.

I am glad I watched it, I like to experience all kinds of approaches in movie-making, but I didn't even invite my wife to join me, I know she would not have lasted 15 minutes. I would think most mainstream movie fans would NOT enjoy this one and watch it to its conclusion.

At home, on Amazon streaming.