Annette – first-look review

When I was about 13, my grand­moth­er took me to the opera for the first time. We went to see Car­men; I fell asleep fair­ly ear­ly on and only woke up when the fla­men­co danc­ing start­ed. Nev­er­the­less, I enjoyed the expe­ri­ence, and this began a pat­tern over the years where­by my grand­ma would take me to see all her favourite shows: Madame But­ter­fly, La bohème, La travi­a­ta. I was fre­quent­ly baf­fled, often enrap­tured. The same goes for Leos Carax’s Annette.

Any­one famil­iar with the music of Ron and Rus­sell Mael (bet­ter known as the genre-defy­ing musi­cal duo Sparks) knows they have lit­tle inter­est in what the Pub­lic At Large wants, or indeed likes. Their five decades in the busi­ness have pro­duced a cou­ple of hits, a radio musi­cal about Ing­mar Bergman, a super­group with Franz Fer­di­nand and The Num­ber One Song in Heav­en to name just a few high­lights. They are, ahem, some­thing of an acquired taste, which makes them a per­fect fit for Carax’s sur­re­al­ist sen­si­bil­i­ties, not to men­tion the enve­lope-push­ing inter­ests of Hollywood’s great hope, Adam Driver.

To reveal too much of Annette’s plot would be to spoil the sur­prise for view­ers, but the sto­ry goes as so: Hen­ry McHen­ry (Dri­ver), motor­cy­cle-rid­ing bad boy stand-up come­di­an, is mad­ly in love with Ann Defras­noux (Mar­i­on Cotil­lard), a revered opera singer. Their whirl­wind romance results in a mar­riage and a daugh­ter, but Henry’s jeal­ousy and inabil­i­ty to let love over­rule his deep-seat­ed self-loathing spells impend­ing doom.

Annette has been described some­what inac­cu­rate­ly as a musi­cal; don’t go in expect­ing catchy songs and care­ful­ly chore­o­graphed dance rou­tines. In true Sparks style, it’s an ambi­tious, auda­cious rock opera, com­plete with much-fet­ed musi­cal cun­nilin­gus and repeat cameo appear­ances from Sparks them­selves. It’s sprawl­ing and self-indul­gent and com­plete­ly bizarre; the more dis­tance I get from it, the more cer­tain I am of its mas­ter­piece status.

Despite the lack of mem­o­rable tunes, how­ev­er, the intri­cate details and sheer scale of the pro­duc­tion invites repeat view­ings (meta open­ing num­ber ​‘So May We Start’ is sure to be a crowd favourite), and it’s intrigu­ing to think how much Sparks and Carax care about their place in the great artis­tic tradition.

Driver’s per­for­mance is one of full-bod­ied enthu­si­asm and phys­i­cal­i­ty, chan­nelling the spir­it of Denis Lavant in Carax’s 1991 film The Lovers on the Bridge. His grav­el­ly voice and com­mand­ing screen pres­ence are com­pelling enough to for­give the nar­ra­tive trans­gres­sions (a strange nod to #MeToo prob­a­bly should have stayed in the writer’s room).

Cotil­lard, mean­while, proves the per­fect foil as a woman betrayed by love in the clas­sic oper­at­ic tra­di­tion. The role was ini­tial­ly meant for Rooney Mara and then Michelle Williams, but it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine any­one else play­ing Ann with such a clear sense of trag­ic naivety.

In a depar­ture from Carax’s pre­vi­ous work, Annette is set in Los Ange­les; does this place the film in the realm of work about Hollywood’s can­ni­bal­is­tic ten­den­cies? Is Hen­ry McHen­ry based on any par­tic­u­lar male come­di­an who prof­its off his self-loathing while con­ve­nient­ly nev­er hav­ing to change his ways?

Annette won’t be for every­one. Sparks aren’t for every­one. Leos Carax isn’t for every­one. Opera isn’t for every­one. Yet it’s hard to argue against the ambi­tion and orig­i­nal­i­ty of this out­ra­geous love sto­ry. Although the film draws from the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma and musi­cals and calls to mind all man­ner of oth­er media, it man­ages to feel entire­ly unique – earnest and hon­est and just a lit­tle pretentious.

As a sin­gu­lar artis­tic vision about tox­ic, self-loathing men, bad par­ent­ing and the grotesque, all-con­sum­ing the­atre of per­for­mance, Annette is a tri­umph. What a joy to live at the same time as artists who are will­ing to plunge them­selves head­first into the cre­ative abyss and let us bear wit­ness from the stands, fid­get­ing ner­vous­ly as we long for an encore.

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