Annette

This is some very strange movie, but I kind of liked it and stayed interested in how the story would end. Had some very weird decisions and shots in it, but all in all I appreciated the efford and the 'unperfectness' it showed. Also it leaves a lot of space for interpretations. Driver and Cotillard are top-notch and even Helberg fitted in quite well. Drivers 'comedy'-shows were great! All in all I recomment the movie to all arthouse-lovers. If you want to watch a blockbuster, go somewhere else.

This might be an unpopular opinion here as the film was selected to open Cannes, and so clearly the committee of experts saw a lot of artistic merit to it. To me, however, it felt like a student play that tries so so hard to be avant-garde that it forgets to be anything else.

I went to a premiere in Prague and halfway in, people were leaving the theater in droves. That's not necessarily the sign of a bad film to me - not everything is for everyone. I still wanted to like it: I like stylized films. I enjoy the surreal. I'm here for the modern musical, genre-melding, society critique. But I had to fight the growing urge to leave myself.

The positives first: you can see the budget at work, the set design and photography are fabulous. Even the 4th wall breaking beginning with the director himself kicking off the film was kind of cheekily confident and got me excited. The pacing is intense and there's a lot of energy. The leads are obviously fantastic actors.

None of that saves the film, however. For being so tightly paced and filled with intensity and musical numbers - it's actually really boring. All the songs follow the same lazy pattern and so while you enjoy the first couple, eventually you find out it's really just people singing one sentence over and over to a rock/opera backdrop.

Adam Driver's performance, especially on stage as a comedian, is powerful - but he kind of stays in just one gloomy tortured emo cry baby position and you don't get to see much of his redeeming qualities (like you did in, say, A Star is Born). Marion Cotillard's characters is essentially just a figure head for kindness and purity who doesn't get much real space to act.

The film is long but the story basic and utterly predictable. There is a lot of emotional manipulation. You're shown a lot of "gasp" shots like Adam Driver performing oral sex on his pregnant wife, her wiping herself on the toilet, and the story overall develops into more and more troubling areas. This comes with a growing visceral gut punch: the general reception of the film where I saw it was people were feeling kind of anxious and sick to their stomach. That could be a good thing, some of the most powerful cinema is very visceral and art doesn't have to be pretty - if only there were some real substance to justify that. But if you just show the inevitable tragic decline of a family and tightly pack increasingly disquieting sights and atmosphere - but don't really show any real development to your characters or give the audience a proper chance to care about them because everything is delivered just as a singing chapter title - well what you get is 2.5hrs or visually stunning emotional manipulation that is hollow at its core.

The whole thing left me feeling like an artist who is so preoccupied with being artsy that he forgot what's beautiful about art in the first place. If anyone finds its heart, please point me to it.

I like the main actors here, when I saw the initial trailer some time back I wrote it on my calendar, I was anxious to see it.

It is a very peculiar movie, mostly using the form of singing dialog. A recurring one is the melody "We love each other so much." However as the story moves along we wonder if Driver's stand up comic character really can love anyone.

It is long, I watched it in probably four different sittings, roughly a half-hour each time. I really was entertained by the experimental approach and its emotional extremes. However if you strip it all down it is a plain story. For me the most interesting scene is about 10 minutes from the end, when dad and Annette, now a young girl, do a face-to-face singing number, I was taken aback by how good and with proper emotion the young girl's singing and acting was.

I am glad I watched it, I like to experience all kinds of approaches in movie-making, but I didn't even invite my wife to join me, I know she would not have lasted 15 minutes. I would think most mainstream movie fans would NOT enjoy this one and watch it to its conclusion.

At home, on Amazon streaming.

The art pop band Sparks (Ron and Russel Mael), recently featured in Edgar Wright's documentary, The Sparks Brothers, has crafted a bizarre, surreal, and all-too-real film that explores the consequences of fame, child exploitation, male stupidity, and marriage. It's a smart rarity, where the characters mostly communicate in song and nothing is safe, not even love.

Henry (Adam Driver), a successful comedian, loves opera singer, Ann (Marion Cotillard, but fame for both is a deal breaker. You've heard it all before (A Star is Born anyone?), and to some extent the disintegration of their marriage is close to a cliché, but their singing and the lack of haranguing or bitter tirades almost has you thinking they can make it. To those adoring fans on the outside, their union is perfect.

With the entrance of their baby girl, Annette, and Ann's exit, Henry is left to his own devices relying on others to care for her but becoming obsessive about Annette's gifted voice. It doesn't take him long to exploit her talent around the world and for the fates to catch up with him.

Driver is particularly effective as a towering talent (his comedy act is unusually odd and bright), brooding and elusive. Although Cotillard could always carry a picture (La Vie En Rose), this one belongs to Driver, whose character is as charged as his performance.

Special credit must be given to the Sparks bros, who wrote the story and the music, evocative of Brian De Palma's Phantom of Paradise and any Sondheim, and to French director Leos Carax, whose off-center vision helps Annette be a wildly different take on the ravages of fame and the hubris of men.

Slow and eccentric for some, just quirky and insightful for others, this romance is artistically enough for anyone wanting a worthy drama that happens to be a musical.

Greetings again from the darkness. The anticipation of seeing a film directed by Leos Carax (HOLY MOTORS, 2012), and written and scored by Ron Mael and Russell Mael of Sparks fame, is derived from expecting the unexpected ... experiencing something we've never before experienced cinematically. And although the film is likely to be quite divisive - beloved by some, dismissed by others, confusing for all - the ingenuity, creativity, and risk-taking are quite something to behold. As for the narrative coherence? Well that's quite a different topic.

A mere six weeks ago I watched and reviewed Edgar Wright's excellent documentary THE SPARKS BROTHERS, where Ron and Russell discussed their affinity and vision for movies, despite a few near misses over the years. This particular material was originally conceived as a rock opera album, and it's probable that very few directors would even attempt the transition to the big screen. It would be equally challenging as an opera, a play, or a stage musical. In simple terms, this is a musical-drama-romance; however in reality, it's confoundingly difficult to define or describe.

The opening sequence begins in a recording studio with director Carax at the sound board as the Sparks band performs "So May We Start?" Soon they are marching the streets of Santa Monica, joined in singing the song by the lead actors of the movie we are about to watch. The narrator tells us, "Breathing will not be tolerated", which takes on a touch of irony during a pandemic.

Adam Driver stars as Henry, an offbeat stand-up comedian, and Oscar winner Marion Cotillard stars as Ann, a popular opera singer. Henry bills himself as 'The Ape of God' and performs an abrasive comedy act that is interactive with his audience. He psyches up for each performance by shadow-boxing in a robe while puffing on a cigarette. Ann is often shown alone on stage (Catherine Trottman sings the opera parts, while Ms. Cotillard sings the rest). The couple is engaged when we open, and they later marry, have a child (the titular Annette), and take different approaches to their career. Henry and Ann are polar opposites and that's best exemplified by how they end their respective shows: he 'moons' his audience, while she gracefully bows in appreciation.

Henry is a man filled with love, yet clueless on how to love. He's a tortured soul - the kind that doesn't believe he deserves the life he has and finds a way to self-destruct. Henry and Ann are passionate lovers and their duet "We Love Each Other So Much" has the most unusual timing that you'll see in a musical; in fact, the musical interludes (with repeating lyrics) often arise at the most inopportune (or at least unexpected) moments. Ms. Cotillard's talents are never fully utilized, while much of the film's weight is carried by Mr. Driver.

After tragedy strikes, the story becomes quite bizarre with Henry and "Baby Annette". To say more would spoil that which should remain surprising. Simon Helberg's role as conductor increases in the second half, and his character's past with Ann lends itself to the complexity of relationships. This is a dark love story, and one that befuddles right up to the end. Director Carax and the Mael brothers could slide into the Avant-garde corner, but that might scare off even more potential viewers, so let's use 'fantastical' instead. Sometimes it tries a bit too hard to shock or agitate, and the stories are a bit discordant, but it's all for a good cause: provocation. The film, dedicated to Carax's daughter Nastya (who appears in the opening sequence), sometimes feels like the wild nightmares that you (mostly) don't want to end. And that's about all that should be said to preserve the experience.

This Musical opens in theaters on August 6, 2021 and on Amazon Prime Video on August 20, 2021.