Directed By: Leos Carax
Starring: Adam Driver, Marion Cotillard, Simon Helberg
You could love this movie. Love it a lot. You just have to be a fan of operatic musical movies based on a lot of fantasy and high artistic symbolism. Unfortunately, there are not so many of those fans in our modern times. So, the audience for “Annette” is very selective and very limited. It doesn’t mean that the movie is a flop, but again, such a big effort for such a small number of viewers, is it worth it?
The movie is full of operatic musical numbers- there are almost no verbal segments- it’s all singing. And it’s good. The orchestration of all the musical themes demanded a lot of teamwork, and it was done very professionally. Simply, an excellently crafted movie from the first minute to the end. But again, who is going to watch 2 plus hours of very slow motion action in our modern sped up times. It means that the project is good, so good- but is created and presented in the wrong time, the wrong century.
The story is very simple: he (Adam Driver) is a stand up comedian, she (Marion Cotillard) is an opera singer. They are in love, they get engaged, married, and have a daughter. Here is where the fantasy in the movie starts to heat up: the little girl is a puppet!. He is declining in his career, but she is on top. Professional jealousy is getting more powerful. A tragic accident happens and she loses her life. The puppet girl, Annette, takes the voice from her mother and becomes a global sensation. In the aftermath of losing his wife, the stand up comedian, Henry McHenry, finds out that his wife had a love affair with the opera conductor (played by Simon Helberg). In a strong effect Henry kills the conductor and he ends up in jail. Annette comes to visit him once. She transforms from a puppet to a real girl and tells him the one and only truth, after all, “Daddy, you don’t have who to love anymore”, before turning back into her puppet version.
Driver’s performance is on a very high level, as usual. Cotillard is also very good in her role, which is a bit shorter than Driver’s role. The puppet team did a top class job with Annette puppet performance. Music by old masters “Sparks” is brilliant from composing to arranging to presenting. Everything in the movie sounds good and visually looks great.
Maybe, this type of movie reminds us all, that it is not all action heroes and fast and cheap action left in today’s cinema. Actually, this movie could be tagged as cinema, while a lot of other crap around streaming platforms and movie theatres today is very far away from actual cinema.
We need more artistic “rebel yells” like “Annette” even if the money spent on the movie will not return back any profit. Synthetic mass production of all kinds of stupidities filling up box offices to the brim are finally getting some resistance from something much more substantial and deep. This is a David and Goliath fight, but it looks like someone, like the creators of “Annette” for example, are not giving up the fight so easily.
