You may have first heard about the film Annette during the surge of headlines coming out of the Cannes film festival, which were most commonly some variation of “Annette: The New Musical Where Adam Driver Sings While Performing Oral Sex on Marion Cotillard.” I understand that this is a huge selling point for many people, but the focus on this scene has left a lot of people in the dark re: the actual facts of this motion picture, like the part where the titular Annette is an infant played by the scariest puppet you will ever lay eyes on. This review is not a part of BSG’s annual series of horror films leading up to Halloween, but reader, it might as well be.
Annette is the latest from director Leos Carax, and has been receiving rave reviews from critics and cinephiles alike. I’m actually surprised that it isn’t more divisive, given how utterly bizarre it is, but the film stands at a respectable 75% on Rotten Tomatoes. As one of Annette’s brave detractors, I know that I will be taking some heat for my open disdain, but I will tell you this: one of my closest friends has already accused me of disliking the film because I am jealous of Baby Annette’s success as a child star—a success I never managed to achieve despite my best efforts and years of voice lessons—so please take this entire review with a grain of salt. As it stands, I am a little bit jealous of Baby Annette.
:/
Annette is, among other things, a musical about a stand-up comic (Adam Driver) who falls in love with an opera singer (Marion Cotillard). The songs are written by Sparks, AKA Ron and Russell Mael, the pop duo who are also the stars of Edgar Wright’s documentary from this year, The Sparks Brothers. The Maels co-wrote the screenplay along with director Carax. Apparently, Annette was originally intended as a concept album, but at some point the Maels decided that it should be a film. This was a mistake. I say this because the music isn’t all bad, and at first I was actually on board. The film begins with “So May We Start,” a meta meditation on putting on a show, during which Driver and Cotillard play themselves. The music is upbeat and catchy. Cute! Fun! I love it!
Do you know what isn’t cute and fun? Approximately 45 minutes of Adam Driver performing the most uncomfortably toxic standup routine you can imagine. This is what we get directly after “So May We Start,” and things move downhill swiftly. And no, it’s not literally 45 minutes, it’s probably like six minutes, but it feels like 45 minutes, and if you need proof, just ask my roommate, who had agreed to watch the film with me but looked over at me halfway through Driver’s routine and said “I don’t know if I can do this.” She abandoned me on the couch, made cookies, and went to watch Terrace House in her bedroom. I envy her.
I know that the discomfort and general unfunny-ness of the routine is intentional. We are not supposed to like this character, his routine is supposed to be absurd and does not mean to endear us to him, and it is supposed to be painful to watch. But it’s not just painful for all of the aforementioned reasons: it is also boring. So boring. Henry McHenry makes one observation about the nature of being a comic in about twenty different ways, and none of the ways make it any more interesting, because the observation itself IS NOT INTERESTING.
This pretty much sums up my problem with the entire film, because it’s an issue that crops up over and over again throughout the course of its 140-minute runtime. Every song can be summed up in one sentence, and plenty of them literally are, such as “We Love Each Other So Much,” in which the titular phrase is repeated seventeen times over the course of two and a half minutes. And okay, I’m sure there is something to be dissected in that the two characters singing this song have a rather tortured relationship that is mostly based on sex, but what would be at the core of that dissection? The same thing that’s at the core of this movie, which is nothing.
sometimes it looked cool though. here is an example
I include in this criticism the entire arc of Baby Annette as a character, a literal puppet who is being exploited by her father for money and fame (I wonder if that’s a metaphor). What are we to take away from the tragic tale of Baby Annette? Fame is bad? Bad men are bad? Life is a stage? These are all basic ideas that are plopped onto the screen and then revisited ad infinitum without any additional insight, as if repeating something more than once gives it any additional meaning.
We spend most of the runtime with Henry McHenry, who remains as flat and unpleasant as he is in his first scene, and while he becomes increasingly villainous as the movie soldiers on, he gains not an ounce of complexity. Ann and the Accompanist are similarly underserved by the script, and Baby Annette has it the worst of all, relegated to silence for the majority of the film (except for when she is performing her unique vocal stylings for her many adoring fans). The only depth that these characters possess is what the actors manage to imbue them with, and it’s not enough.
The best parts of this movie are the parts where it fully embraces its own absurdity and leans into its sense of humor. Baby Annette’s halftime show debacle is genuinely hilarious, and I think/hope it’s supposed to be. Adam Driver lifting his head from between Marion Cotillard’s legs to belt out his tenth or eleventh “we love each other so much”? Also hilarious. But the other issue here is that the film does not know how to balance its tone, and the earnestness it often leans into is unearned. It is difficult to muster a single crumb of sentimentality for a character like Henry McHenry, and though I sympathize with the plight of Baby Annette, she is not fully-formed enough as a character to carry the film’s emotional arc. The only feelings I experienced during my viewing of Annette were varying shades of disdain.
All of these actors are doing what they can. Caroline Champetier, the film’s cinematographer, is doing what she can. Baby Annette is doing what she can. But this movie is not interesting enough for any of them, and the only reason I am still thinking about it is because of how baffled I am by its reception.
And also the puppet. I am still thinking about the puppet.
goodnight baby annette. forever