Annette

 2021, d. Leos Carax - amazon prime

Oh, it's 5am, I've got a toothache that may or may not be sinus related, and my BPPV dizziness is still a problem.  Can't sleep.  What better time to write about Annette... a bizarre fever dream of a film that is daring if only that it dares you to like it.

If you haven't heard of Annette yet, well, that's because in spite of it's rousing debut at Cannes (where Carax won the Award for Best Director), Amazon acquired it and has spent little money or effort to promote it.  But, having watched the film, I can see why.  Outside of the film nerds who will actively seek out a Carax film or be up on the conversations of current film, this is not a movie for the masses.

Annette is a musical, co-written by Carax with Ron and Russel Mael, otherwise known as the band Sparks.  The band was the subject of a wonderful documentary earlier this year from Edgar Wright that exposes every reason why people would love them, but also reveal what might turn people off off them.  Both are very much at play in Annette.  Sparks' music, having evolved dramatically over a 40-year, 25 album career, is lyrically and sonically playful, accompanying an art house sensibility that seeks to challenge an audience as often as it wants to pleasingly wiggle into their ears.  Much is the same with Annette, though Sparks jump from the album format (which in my approach of their discography, only occassionally have a theme) to having to walk through a fully story to tell, and while they're doubtlessly up for the task, that's not necessarily the same as being up to the task.

The film's opening is its most alluring aspect, starting with a plea to the audience over the production studio cards, to stop being distracted, just stop breathing even, and listen.  As the screen brings into view a building's exterior, with flashes of sound meters overlayed, a fuzzed out version of a French ditty briefly plays.  Smash cut into the studio, where the director Carax and his daughter sit behind the panel of dials and switches, the band before them, tuning up to start, and then they start, by asking...singing "So may we start".  But one verse into the song, Ron and Russell get up from behind their instruments, without breaking rhythm, and venturing out of the studio, followed by their negligee-wearing backup chorus singers.  Outside of the studio they are joined by the main players in the cast - Adam Driver, Marian Cotillard, Simon Helberg - and a six pack of children chorus singers.  As they close out the song, Driver and Cotillard are provided with wigs and wardrobe before Cotillard hops into the back of a black SUV, and Driver onto the back of a motorbike, where he drives off, the song fading out and the singers waving "Bye Henry", and "Bye Ann"

It's an invigoratingly meta opening that, moments later is completely undercut by one of the worst cinematic tropes: the movie stand-up comedian. The "movie stand-up comedian" is typified by being fatally unfunny, and yet getting rousing rounds of laughter out of the audience.  Here, Driver is the comedian, Henry McHenry (for real), and the film posits him as a superstar standup in the abrasive, confrontational vein of Andrew Dice Clay or Sam Kinison, the kind of comedian who achieves fleeting fame based on a stage persona moreso than comedic chops.  There's a cult of personality to Henry McHenry which clearly a large audience has bought into, yet as Henry does his routine, which breaks in and out of song as well as call-and-response with the audience, it's clear Henry hasn't really bought into himself.  He lacks confidence.  And his material is, truly, direly unfunny.  But Driver has the rhythms down (he thanks Chris Rock and Bill Burr in the closing credits), he certainly knows the role he's playing, and he plays it well.  It's just a reminder of the distance this film holds you to, as well as the meta filter it doesn't even want to shake.

Henry is in love with Ann, an rising star in opera.  He's in awe of her talent, and watches dotingly as she dies for the audience on stage, in what seems like a nightly routine for them both.  They break into song together, the errantly repetitious "We Love Each Other So Much", in which the pair sing the title phrase in unison over and over for four minutes as they wander through differing scenes, ending in a fleshy, raw sex scene where their passionate undulating still takes a side seat to their repetitive singing.  Sparks' catalog features many a track with similar adventures in repetition, to similar jointly impressive/annoying effect.  Here, in context of the story, it's presented in earnest, but in hindsight it's evident the two are more trying to convince themselves, as well as the audience, that they do indeed love each other, so, so much.

Post coitus, Henry strikes a Nosferatu pose and attacks Ann with tickles.  It's an intentionally uncomfortable scene that doesn't want to distance itself from insinuations of rape.  Whether sexual or not, it's made clear this is an unwanted physical assault, and Henry doesn't seem to notice.  The film challenges the audience to try and marry this grotesque display with the minutes before imploring that they "Love Each Other So Much".  

As the film progresses, Henry's doubts about his relationship and himself seep in.  Ann is pregnant and Henry worries about his suitability as a parent (spoiler alert, he's no good).  It's also becoming more and more evident the film is not a "two hander", with mutual focus on both Henry and Ann, but the Henry McHenry show.  His anxieties, fears and self-absorption push Ann out of focus, and, eventually, off a boat.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Ann gives birth to Annette, who comes out of the delivery room very obviously a doll, her static face and articulated features obvious.  There's no denying the intent here to try and pass this doll off as a real child, except that the performers all treat it as such.  As time passes in the film, Annette grows and her movement becomes very marionette like ("mari-Annette"...huh, I *just* got that).  The intonation is that, to Henry (since he is our focal character, unfortunately) she is a prop in his life, and later, a puppet.  She's not so much a person.  And that attitude is reflective back on his relationship with Ann.

There are these godawful news reports throughout the film that simultaneously act as exposition, transition and as a world building, how the outside world see Ann and Henry as a couple.  Like "the movie stand-up comedian", "the movie news anchor" is one of those things that films so often can't seem to crack.  Acting is a different skill than stand-up or hosting a news program, and writing jokes and news script is a different skill than writing a screenplay.  The thing is, it seems like Carax wants these things to feel as fake an awful as possible, as he toys with edifice continually throughout the film (in on of the films better examples, Ann performs her opera on stage, in front of a huge crowd, the artificial set intoning a forest but certainly not mistaken for a real one...but the camera pans around and Ann steps through what should be the back of the stage, the framing of the set into a real forest, lost in her performance for minutes, before returning to stage and her adulation).  But I digress.  A news report informs us of Ann's meteoric rise in the world of opera and celebrity, while Henry's career is stagnating, his stage shtick becoming more and more niche.

Henry, spending more time with Annette, less time performing, less time with Ann, gets lost in his own insecurities, and takes to drinking.  Ann falls asleep in a limo to a performance, awakening to a news report that many women have come out with accusations against Henry, only to awaken again to a very different news broadcast.  Was it real, these allegations against Henry, or is it Ann's only subconscious becoming heightened and aware of Henry's true nature.  The film doesn't conclusively answer that.  It never outright addresses allegations arising from Henry's past, but it's a clear demarcation point in the film's view of Henry.  And it's followed by a disastrous performance in which Henry talks about killing his wife with tickles, to the discomfort of the audience.  It's the final nail in the coffin of his career.

  Driver is a massive man, tall an broad and with intense facial features, but we had to trust the film that despite his toxic stage persona, he loved Ann and that his parental anxiety was coming from a place of love.  Following the "allegations" dream sequence/news report/musical number Henry is only monster, seen as nothing else.  A news report tells us there's troubled times between Henry and Ann, and that they're taking their child on a boat trip.

Smash cut to stormy waters, a small boat on portentously stormy seas.  Waves swell ominously against the window as Ann tries to put Annette to sleep, Henry is nowhere to be seen.  Out on the deck, the very staged deck with a projected backdrop of rolling waves so grand they tower over the leads, the tops of the waves never visible.  Lighting flashes.  Henry's been drinking, Ann tries to get him inside.  Henry wants to dance.  It's an aggressive, ugly, and, foremost, artificial confrontation, leading to Ann's accidental?/intentional? push overboard.

The film has just passed its halfway point and Ann is dead, but she will haunt Henry through Annette, and when Annette sees the night sky, she sings with Ann's operatic pitch.  

Henry is a single father believing he has no love to give and that he's unworthy of receiving love.  His fortunes and purpose ebbing, he tries to sink himself into Annette, into being a dad, but loving doesn't come naturally to him.  And upon discovering Annette's night-sky-singing he does the fatherly thing of turning her into a freakshow, a commodity to be exploited, taking her around the world, joined by "The Accompanist" (Helberg), who until this time was only seen in the opening chorus, and one subsequent interlude where he briefly sings an introduction to himself.

The Accompanist is in with Henry because he loved Ann, and he cares for Annette.  He's there to ensure that she is safe, advancing his own career as a conductor is a side effect but not his focus.  Over the global travels, Henry abandons Annette with The Accompanist as he parties and sleeps around, fueled by self loathing, but not self awareness.  The Accompanist clearly becomes Annette's parental figure, and he later discerns that he may actually be Annette's biological father.  When he raises this possibility to Henry, it engrages him to the point of murder which Annette witnesses but Henry covers up.

Having earned their riches but also louder voices decrying Annette's exploitation, Henry decides on one last, grand, final show at the "Hyperbowl" (hyperbole) and a reluctant Annette refuses to sing.  A crowd, starting to turn, is silenced when Annette reveals that her father kills people.

A few years later, Henry is in jail, visited by Annette.  We see the Annette doll on the prison stool displaced by a young girl, a real girl, no longer under Henry's control, no longer his puppet.  The pair sing a powerful and intense duet.  Henry looks to Annette, perhaps his child, perhaps not and questions if he can actually love anything.  Can't he love her?  She gives him his answer. No, he has nothing to love, because he's incapable of it. (The young girl, Devyn McDowell, is a powerful singer for a child, if not the strongest actor)

Over the closing credits, the cast and crew walk down a hill with paper lanterns, reciting in unison a goodbye to the audience.

It's a film that starts strong and finishes strong but it's everything in the middle that make it hard to accept.  It's clear that central piece where Ann seems to be confronted with her husband's past is pulling in all the weight of of the #metoo movement, but buried in obfuscation it doesn't reckon with the actual power of the movement.  The storyteller's decision to focus on Henry to start, and then double-down on it for the second half is I think its critical flaw.  It's never asking us to sympathize with Henry, and I'm not sure it even cares enough to ask us to understand him.  It's like we're just supposed to buy into the spectacle of the destructive, toxic white male.  It offers very little insight or message beyond just a thin character study of a man of little substance.

I need to stop talking about movies for what they *should* have been and just look at them for what they are.  But Annette missed a real opportunity to reckon with the subject matter it just skirts around.  At that mid point, Ann should have been actually confronted with her husband's past.  Up to this point we could still believe it possible that Henry did really love her and was trying to be a good husband and father, but imagine the potency of Ann having to reconcile the man she knows with the man he was, and perhaps still is.  What does Ann have to deal with, both publicly, privately and internally.  Can she trust Henry anymore, his secrets unveiled?  Can she trust him with their daughter?  Who is he?  

The first half, following that opening "So May We Start" is kind of boring, frankly, visually interesting but not exciting.  The boat sequence is utterly dynamic and it does enliven the production, but the second half falls kind of lifeless again as we're asked primarily to invest in a doll's safety and security in the care of a cowardly, murderous parent. There's a very different way to approach that second act, shifting focus from Henry to Ann, but chooses the wrong route, by keeping the worst character as the focal figure.  It's like Carax and the Maels were incapable of envisioning the female perspective, and it makes for a more unlikable and, frankly, vapid story.  

The production, however, is anything but vapid.  It's full of intrigue and intent, piling metaphors on top of each other.  Carax certainly has vision, and it's evident he prides himself on being a visual stylist and artist.  He certainly has the skills to pull off his vision, and it's an impressive achievement, it's just unfortunate it's in service of a story without true purpose. 

And it's really, really weird that he dedicates this film to his daughter.