So, picture this crossover between Grand Guignol and Broadway: we have the film Annette directed by Leos Carax, an animated opera written by the pop band Sparks, comprising brothers Ron and Russell Mael, who actually wrote the film. Together, they combine magical forces and construct and tell a rather familiar story in Hollywood of a couple who appears perfectly suited only to be ruined through fame. It is a story of love that begins with beautiful imagery and romance but ends in a sordid story of self and abuse that is much less hypnotizing but strange and sad all the same. All the elements were present such that the film could be used to compare with any one of the many renditions of ‘A Star is Born’, but the narrative begs to differ – foremost in the case of the couple, is their enchanting infant Annette, albeit a puppet.
Adam Driver’s character, a stand-up comedian named Henry McHenry has a performance style and film presence that many would find bizarre. He does a set which is rather grim and dances on the border of fiction and reality and most times revolves about death, a theme throughout the movie, and which is also expressed in the several pieces his wife, Ann Defrasnoux, a film acclaimed actress played by Marion Cotillard. They are married, but only on stage, because off stage, they can’t help but lead extreme lives. Their love story is both played out in public when they wish the media and behind closed doors, becoming hot and sensual, resulting in childlike fun play and wonder at times and some mind blowing creative musical sex when naked bodies, held in rhythmical and sensual whirlpools, become enmeshed together and also with the beat.
Annette is a totally different type of musical that has no dancing in between. The film displays some degree of choreography with some interaction between the subject and the camera with Carax and the cinematographer Caroline Champetier switching even the most basic interactions into some freaky dance routines that would be beautiful even if you were to watch them on mute. The son and the daughter are often positioned as being Henry and Ann in regards to a wider audience by such means as their intense eye contact across photographing paparazzi or making their respective stage audiences of the audience a main feature of the musical parts of the film. How the characters view the society, the audiences portray them is just as critical, whether through short detached funny clips, of celebrity news busy at musing about the well-structured Henry-on-his-feet wheeling round the stage abs’ vantage, which is of course, the balcony. There is also a camera that favours one of the movie’s other characters, the Man, who is a music conductor portrayed as infatuated with Ann, played by Simon Helberg who’s also dismissive and conceited over Ann’s stardom and the darkness that forms it. As he leads the band, the cinematographic device tends to circumvent him in close-up while the instrument shifts with the rhythm of the music.
Although Helberg has relatively few scenes, where he is present, it is always memorable, for it contains an emptiness filled with deep feelings of unfulfilled romance. It is this sensation that is countered not just by movement and music but even stillness as is central to Annette. There’s also the way the audience is kept away from Henry as he performs which is mostly done in this weird terrifying and unsettling silence. It serves to whet the appetite in terms of what he is able to do. When Henry approaches the stage during such scenes to proclaim his anger whilst in a matted green loose robe — part of his disheveled costume — he is seen shadow boxing with his head covered, waiting in the wings like a boxer waiting to be led into a ring. The tragedy of Anne and Henry’s life is viewed in flashes where the action of her one-man show is constantly interrupted by super imposed images of Ann performing on stage, hair nails bursting from dressed to red while the scenery has equally blue pillars. Henry does not escape her mind at any moment. As they go in and out of each other’s orbits, this movement is conveyed through lighting and structural means out of which the musical theatre humourous crass sickly green world is Henry’s while opera is refined bright blue Ann’s.
The drama between low culture and elitist high culture is the central theme of all of Sparks’ campy openers including their aesthetics of shameless in histrionics. Their some verses for the film are very dry and more often than not quite repetitive, but as a result every piece of composition winds all the words to texture. The reaction to “We Love Each Other So Much,” a pure love song that repeats its own title till middle age, is a treatment as a mantra or a silenced vow (there is a lot of such addiction, especially after Ann and Henry instead of or rather about Annette). It also works that Cotillard and Driver are great performers who put physical and even psychological need into every aria despite Driver being an ineffective vocalist. It is also a well known fact that Western musicals… But this cannot be said about playback singing where lip-synching is normal in Indian films in which the on-screen characters do not perform the songs themselves. And since the trend of making musicals in Hollywood has diminished in the last few decades, one does not require to possess any good singing voice to be a star. While Annette can be considered as co-production between France, Germany and Belgium, it cannot escape being within this context (good and bad all included) especially with all the actors being from H’wood.
As for Driver’s singing voice, it is just average, except for one particular moment which is more of a strained performance, otherwise its all nail on chalkboard. Most of the time, however, he and Helberg are discontented with most of the numbers as they have to talk or even use a whisper. Most of them pass very well during the singing roles that have more of a normal talk, while they let Cotillard shine as well as Ann the opera singer, and Annette the supermarionette’s voice.
Annette is an amazing figure, a doll who is designed to have its walking movements imitate a real person’s and has wide like-eyed emotions built into its design. Out of all, she has an American accent and red (dyed) hair, and her name Annette, seems as if it suggests that she is a young Ann (funnily enough, being a puppet makes her a mini me of Marion Cotillard too). Even though Annette is said to be inspired by hundreds of puns — would it come as a wonder if people refer her name as a potted form of marionette — there is an alternate perspective from which her character is viewed. She not only carries Ann’s hopes and ambitions by virtue of their common attributes, but also Henry’s paranoia over artificiality, over his competitiveness when Ann’s career starts to eclipse his own. What, however, sells the character of Annette as a character, a living breathing being inside a frame is that unequivocally takes the cake is Driver and Cotillard’s commitment to the bit. These two actors are far better at displaying feelings through actions, even though they are good with words, than when they talk, only mainly to react and to think. And then eventually to wonder about the feelings that will somehow crystallize as warm emotions towards Annette, each other or both. They have again come back to a stage when they feel the words do not matter.
Stages feature as a more constant element within the story, yet the feature film works with non-narrative methods and does not aim to transpose the art of stage musicals onto the screen (which is what happens with movie musicals). On the contrary, the aim is to rethink the screen just as a material, which can be combined with the medium of music. From time to time the intensity of the light in the frame changes with the tempo of the music, as to demonstrate ‘shaking’ sound which results in mushy imagery. How imaginative images of contradicted ideas he would readily provides for every simple and straight forward line, true to form, and needs to have pictured sound and moving images in within one. A lot of those papers also have gone to the light editing which was shined by Nelly Quettier. Therefore, always maintaining consistency; clichés helped to transform the feel of the film cut from a thunderous cinematographic dance music sequence into medium-long uninterrupted takes intercut between ideas when necessary. This particular feeling is true to many scenes, including the sudden shift from slow classical music to fast aggressive rock music while watching scenes of a couple walking in the woods and quickly cutting to motorcycle riding.
Except for the second half of the film — predicting what’s about to happen — there are no other surprises. This is more subdued but one can’t exactly say it’s ordinary.
The film, although without a doubt original, contains some elements that were seen in the works of Carax. In particular, its first episode “So May We Start,” with Sparks, Carax and other cast members acting as themselves and asking the audience’s permission to perform, is highly reminiscent of the accordion interlude in Carax’s hyper-energetic masterpiece Holy Motors. In both episodes, the musical building is presented as a never-ending attempt to funnel a proscenium filled with people towards the camera in one long continuous shot. At the same time, the scene of Ann’s introduction where she dons a skincare face mask brings a cheeky resemblance to the late actress Edith Scob and not just her mask-clad character in Holy Motors, but the 1960 film Eyes Without a Face to which Holy Motors was referencing. Weaving Annette into the tapestry of cinema history, Carax packed her with a versatile set of traditional special effects that include pooled shots, bringing Sparks into that tapestry too in the process.
Even though Carax first delved into film making back in the 80’s, it is in Annette, which was originally intended to be a concept album ‘Sparks’ that Forth is other film work for the 70’s arms production of failed attempts likes Jaques Tati and Tim Burton in the 90’s. That Sparks be one of the first people seen on this film is like an apt victory because its high time these and not this enthused fronds characterized by high praises were long time suggesticians of postmodern and avantbuck Cinema. This is reminiscent of Tinseltown’s mafia style picture where there is more than one main character. An oblique ethereal Annette which defies and runs unabashed of any one particular type of language music, portrays love in its fullest glory through its simple frames.
The Verdict
The doomed lovers of the movie – Marion Cotillard’s stage actress on the rise and Adam Driver’s sneakered humorist – Annette will finally crown a noble and yet bizarre addict in a gentle puppeteer-cum-pulcinella of liberating perversions and sad dreams, transforming her obsessions into a doll that sings and enchants no matter how dark times may be.
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