Annette

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 insti­gat­ed 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. And so it goes for Leos Carax’s Annette.

Any­one famil­iar with the music of Ron and Rus­sell Mael (aka 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 25 stu­dio albums, a radio opera about Ing­mar Bergman, and an unpro­duced Jacques Tati film to name just a few high­lights. They are 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.

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 sopra­no. Their whirl­wind romance results in a mar­riage and a gift­ed daugh­ter – named Annette – 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, but eschews the Broad­way tra­di­tion of 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 an enchant­i­ng­ly off putting mar­i­onette. It’s sprawl­ing and self-indul­gent and com­plete­ly bizarre. It is quite pos­si­bly a masterpiece.

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

Annette won’t be 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.