Film Review

Annette (2021)

A stand-up comedian and his opera-singer wife have a daughter with a surprising gift.

Leos Carax’s sixth feature (his first in English) is enormously self-indulgent but also compelling, ridiculous, and emotionally powerful. It’s a musical, but don’t expect big hummable tunes; it’s a drama, but don’t expect to get inside most of the characters because they’re subsumed in the production’s idiosyncrasies; and it’s also, perhaps, a horror musical… but abandon all thought of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

It’s also, most definitely, a film to be seen at the cinema because its excessiveness demands a big screen. That didn’t stop walk-outs at its Cannes Festival premiere, however, and it remains a divisive film that most will either love or hate.

Lavish, wildly over-produced, and verging on the absurd though it is, Annette tells quite a simple story. Henry McHenry (Adam Driver) is a modestly successful stand-up comedian engaged and soon married to the more celebrated opera singer Ann Desfranoux (Marion Cotillard). They have a daughter (played by Devyn McDowell when a bit older), and potential…