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The drama of the gifted child6/22/2023 ![]() If there is nothing in “Annette”-which is dedicated to Stephen Sondheim, among others-quite as overwhelming as Driver’s roaring rendition of Sondheim’s “Being Alive” in “ Marriage Story” (2019), that is hardly the fault of the leading man, and it’s worth sticking with Carax’s film for the sake of its no-frills final scene. At one intimate juncture, he lifts his face from between the thighs of a naked Cotillard to sing the next line, demonstrating not just professional commitment but terrific breath control. That’s a bold proposition, if not a funny one, and Driver’s singing, at once tremulous and lusty, is no less unabashed. “Annette” is a folie de grandeur, alas, without the grandeur. Is there anything here as convincingly wild as the spectacle of Juliette Binoche water-skiing down the Seine, lit by cataracts of fireworks, in “The Lovers on the Bridge”? Hell no. Would Ann even have fallen for Henry in the first place? Unlikely. Would Henry, Ann, and their daughter be as crazily famous, or infamous, as the story maintains? Please. “Annette,” by contrast, strikes one false note after another. Likewise, it is logically absurd, in Carax’s haunting “ Holy Motors” (2012), that the hero should return, at the close of a working day, to a family of chimps yet the welcome he receives is touching and true. I don’t believe that police cars fly around L.A., as they do in “ Blade Runner” (1982), but I buy every tenebrous inch of that film, and each drop of its filthy rain. Whether we believe in a motion picture does not matter. At the age of six or so, she gives her farewell concert, borne aloft into a stadium by a quartet of drones, with Henry, her anxious Prospero, looking on. With the aid of a conductor (Simon Helberg), who was once her mother’s beau, she becomes a global sensation. (Having raised this topical suggestion, the movie more or less abandons it.) Tragedy descends, in a storm at sea, but Annette, now a toddler, survives I guess we are meant to think of stranded Shakespearean daughters, like Marina and Miranda, the difference being that Annette, post-trauma, begins to sing. As she grows, her parents bicker and clash, and a TV clip reports that Henry has been accused of sexual harassment. And it’s a doll-a big-eared painted puppet, named Annette, though nobody is so gauche as to mention the fact. The Maels may be masters of refrain (“My Baby’s Taking Me Home,” on their 2002 album, “Lil’ Beethoven,” consists of lil’ more than one recurring phrase), but movies are an impatient medium, and too much repetition can, if unchecked, turn into a nag and a drag.Īnd, lo, Ann and Henry have a baby. The more they assert their passion, the more they sound like desperate self-persuaders, and the less inclined you are to accept their protestation. Twining hands, moseying in the countryside, or bestriding a motorbike, they sing and re-sing, “We love each other so much”-which is, if you think about it, an extremely odd thing to announce. Henry, a comedian, and Ann, a classical, or faux-classical, chanteuse, are already an item when the film begins. Yet what ensues is a melodrama of such peculiar fervor that we somehow feel we ought to take it seriously I kept smothering guilty laughs, as one does when reading the surtitles during productions of Puccini. It’s a merry way to kick things off, and it allows Carax and the Maels to stand back from the action, as it were-to arch an eyebrow and say, “C’mon, it’s only a movie.” “Annette” is steeped in their trademark blend of the soaring and the staccato, and they appear at the outset, chanting “So May We Start” in a recording studio and leading a cavalcade of singers out onto the streets of Los Angeles. The lyrics, the songs, and, for good measure, the screenplay are by Ron and Russell Mael, the brotherly duo better known as the band Sparks, who have worked together since Richard Nixon was in the White House. ![]() ![]() Everybody joins in: major characters, midwives, theatre audiences, and cops. What distinguishes this latest Carax adventure is that it’s a musical. From “The Night Is Young” (1986), “The Lovers on the Bridge” (1991), and “Pola X” (1999) to “Annette,” Carax has stuck to his story: boy meets girl, and the meeting sends them down into the depths. Fast-forward to Carax’s new movie, “Annette,” and you find Henry McHenry ( Adam Driver), who at one point, sundered from his lover, Ann Defrasnoux (Marion Cotillard), is left with their young daughter. Wind back to the opening of Leos Carax’s first feature, “Boy Meets Girl” (1984), and you find a woman who has just split from her lover, Henri, and taken their young daughter with her. ![]()
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