In Annette, The Theatrical Intersects With Reality In Fascinating Ways
Leos Carax’s Bizarre And Esoteric Musical Aims To Articulate How The Hollywood Idea Of Romance And Family Impacts The Real Thing
Tristan Young @talltristan
Films are at their best, or perhaps most functional one could argue, when they dramatize the dramatic. Such a sentiment may seem near tautological in its obviousness- of course that is their function. However, opportunities do exist to circumvent the truism within cinema. Annette is, to an extent an exploration of those opportunities. It’s a narrative composed of equal parts turbulent & momentous depictions of a doomed relationship, but also the interstitial and benign moments- ones that seemingly have no developmental bearings but move a story along just as importantly. Director Leos Carax uses an unconventional approach to pacing and genre to craft a romance that was doomed to fail not just to rapturous circumstance but also the doldrums of time and inevitability. An experience between two lovers that ran its course just as much as any Dickensian or Shakespearian turbulence would up end their romance. In crafting a tale of lost love that weaves its dynamism through minimal and granular deterioration along with outlandish incidents it grafts the story onto a broader confessional of Hollywood and all of its exigent obsessions; all the churlish needs for gaudy frivolity that defines the culture, laid bare just as it celebrates that same culture’s unwavering audacity. Annette is something akin to group therapy for the broader Hollywood gestalt. No wonder it works out its neurosis through an ostentatious musical and a nightmarishly creepy puppet.
Annette may come off as a touch alienating when trying to get into it, and not just because it’s a musical- and an atypically structured one at that. Yet for all of its esoteric stylistic choices, it has a fairly straight forward, if evolving story. The film stars Adam Driver as Henry McHenry, an edgy and cynical comic whose performative notoriety has catapulted him to national fame. He has fallen in love with Marion Cotillard’s Ann Defrasnoux, a supremely talented opera singer who is just as beloved. If Annette truly asks anything from the viewer, it’s to maintain the suspension of disbelief that allows opera to be a medium that is greatly admired and popular in America to the point where it would have national stars. Henry and Ann fall madly in love, get married, and have a baby, the titular Annette. It’s shortly after the birth of Annette that cracks and schisms within their relationship break the hermetically sealed adoration they have for each other. As their marriage falls apart, drastic decisions are made, some that have ramifications for years. Also starring is Simon Helberg who plays a character credited only as The Accompanist, Ann’s accompanying pianist who holds a dormant and unrequited love for her.
For its seemingly linear and straight forward narrative, the story beats are somewhat obliquely rendered throughout. Annette can be a challenging film to approach because for the first act you’re just not quite sure where it’s all going. At the onset of the film Henry and Ann are already madly in love so the story has already obviated the blossoming romance story angle. And since no conflict between the two appears to rise until after their child Annette is born, we appear to merely observing the couple in blissful perpetuity for some time. Once their relationship takes a turn for the worse a series of precipitous events gives the story a more natural sense of momentum. However even in the quieter, seemingly benign first act Carax weaves subtle hints that all is not well; minute details that would never flare up as dramatic beats in a normal film but intuit an atypical air of foreboding nonetheless. In doing so Annette renders a relationship regardless of its florid vibrancy or quivering death throes as more nuanced than a traditional narrative might accommodate.
Take for instance those incessant, intentionally obnoxious tabloid news segments that perforate the film with intrusive exposition as to the supposed status of Henry and Ann’s relationship. For a film that looks for a synthesis between the edginess of performance comedy and the luxuriated grace of opera- seeking both a tonal and stylistic representation of such- these brief moments of visual gossamer stick out like a sore thumb. The announcer’s voice is agitating, the color schemes surrounding the chryons are baroque to the point of gaudiness. It’s a needless violation of the aestheticized vision of the film. On a meta-textual level that is exactly the point. This overwrought expositing into Ann and Henry’s relationship is a tacit acknowledgment of Hollywood’s unhealthy obsession with celebrity romance. In this sense these tabloid interludes serve a similar function as how the news reels in Starship Troopers provided meta commentary on the burgeoning current of proto fascist jingoism in America.
These invasive observations into our characters in the film are framed as happening in the abstract, far removed from the actually reality of the life Henry and Ann share, but Annette argues that is very much not the case. Our two leads are absolutely not immunized from the effects of our obsessive gaze. It has real consequences for them, it puts pressure on their relationship, it adds a performative dimension to it- one that requires a constant attention to public relations on their part- that should not be asked of them. We as the Hollywood celebrity enamoured collective are inflicting our will and our superficial exigencies on the two. This is going to have subtle but compounding and pernicious effects on Henry and Ann. We are not merely observing, we are interacting with them, contaminating their life with our prying eyes, through the vector of tabloids. Look to the earlier scene when Henry picks up Ann after a performance; what should have been a quiet moment of adoration between the two must turn into an expression of theatrical gesturing to appease the paparazzi. Carax in no uncertain terms characterizes this as a malignant influence on their lives long before any discernible issues in their relationship arise.
Other elements of the modern Hollywood ecosystem that animates pop culture discourse are similarly rendered in a problematic almost regretful terms. The asshole comedian who abuses his audience and is alleged to have a history of assault is present and accounted for. The backstory of Henry skews so close to recent history that it sub textually reads as an act of contrition on the part of Hollywood for producing such wayward souls with an unnerving efficiency and regularity. As the film’s subject matter morphs in the second and third act Annette further interrogates the idea of the Hollywood child star. The obvious exploitation, the self dealing on the part of disaffected parents, or parental guardians. The stolen childhood of the young star whose upbringing plays out more and more like a hostage situation. We have seen this over and over across generations- everyone from Michael Jackson to Brittney Spears- that the trajectory of these events are so predicable they can be mapped within a half hour of cinema with assured totality. Each beat of this tragedy is depicted with an immutable sentiment of penance in Annette.
Even our more modern obsession with the true crime sub genre is examined in the later part of the film. One of the more recent developments in pop culture zeitgeist once again champions things like an invasion of privacy, and expectation for illumination on topics or entities that are would prefer the opposite. All of this relates to the boundaries that Hollywood dismantles for those that have given up their privacy, even if they only ever tacitly acknowledged the fact. Annette can be read as a tragedy on a literal level if one so chooses, but it’s more starkly ruinous on a thematic level. Carax does an excellent job of weaving the text and subtext into one coherent thread.
Of course one may struggle to extract meaning in this, or any form, if the musical genre isn’t for you. Much like the narrative ask that we allow for opera being prominent within America’s entertainment appetite, you need to have a certain enthusiasm or at least tolerance for musicals to get the most out of Annette. Even as a confident addition to the genre, Annette’s approach to melodic pacing can be a little strange. Not every sequence blossoms into a fill on song, be at a ballad or overture. Some of the arrangements start and stop in fits, evaporating into the narrative ether before they really get going. Those of us that may have been excited for Ann’s courtroom moment towards the end would be disappointed to see that it never really materializes. Some of the songs are a little lyrically unambitious, with verses that are almost egregiously plaintive and languid. The reliance on repetition can get a little mundane. Viewers with only a cursory experience in musicals- say the high concept lyrical gymnastics of Hamilton or The Book of Mormon- might struggle to sink their teeth into these pieces. There isn’t much in the way of circular architecture or symmetrical call backs to make the music more layered or interwoven, leading to some of the arrangements to feel a little like detritus.
This is far from a constant thankfully, as some of the musical moments are quite striking in their design, scope and execution. Henry’s police interrogation theme has a spirited back and forth that is precisely choreographed and with a satisfying melodic escalation. Adam Driver nails the line, “Everybody knows my acts are full of provocation!” with guilty but frustrated panache. Henry’s final song with Annette glides with reserved minimalism but squeezes so much emotional turmoil from the battered characters. The opening song, with a brassy pop jazz saunter has a slick modern tenor that’s not really present elsewhere in the film; although the meta narrative choices of the film give good cause for such compartmentalization. Annette is at its best musically when it wears its influences on its sleeve. As the film draws from such a broad diaspora of musical cues it can be quite liberal and explicit with what it lifts from without seeming like it’s completely copying one style or moment in musical history. It takes advantage of this freedom to marvellous effects at many points. As Ann approaches Henry shortly after a rapturous moment on their yacht, she quietly erupts into aria and her cadence is an overt and quite stunningly specific homage to Bjork. She sings, “I will haunt you Henry for the rest of your life/ through Annette I haunt you, her voice will be my ghost”, which is a line that could absolutely be a straight pull from Vulincura. No wonder it’s the best moment in the film.
These influences extend to the vivid and chaotic orchestral score of Annette and helps breath playfulness and urgency into the narrative in ways that the stoic performances cannot always accommodate. Ann’s near hallucinogenic drive into LA has all the trappings of a Phillip Glass composition from his Koyannisqatsi era. A musical piece centered on Annette later on as well as a spirited bout from the Accompanist character recalls a Tim Burton era Danny Elfman; Gothic, ominous, but lavishly idiosyncratic. Although the aforementioned scene with the Accompanist once again consigns the role of a conductor to being confoundingly unknowable and obtuse to the proletarians among us who have no idea how the position works within the orchestra (I’m raising my hand here, and I was in band class back in school), it’s an engrossing and riveting scene nonetheless. Another piece later in the film sounds heavily inspired by the song Whatever Lola Wants from the 1955 musical Damn Yankees. There’s a brief moment under a moonlight shot that even has the DNA of John Williams classic score in Raiders Of The Lost Arc. Annette’s musical direction does an admirable job of parleying all of these discordant threads into homage and sly references as opposed to using them as crutches or direct blue prints to graft songs onto. For a film so obsessed with the ontological idea of celebrity and pop culture hysteria, it’s very rewarding to hear its metaverse comprised of so many fascinating elements of real life pop culture. It allows its rhetorical idea to permeate our literal sensory interaction with the film in satisfying ways.
Of course for all of the implied mea culpa surrounding the worst of Hollywood’s excesses and the engrossing depth to its sound design, Annette is just a very strange film. Its pacing harkens back to a pre Jaws 70s. It awkwardly inserts anachronistic celluloid frame layering with mystifying purpose at times. The puppet used in place of a child actor is mildly terrifying. There is an overhead shot of a stuffed monkey flying over the LA skyline. On top of that I simply cannot tell if Adam Driver is a good singer (Cotillard indisputably is). But for a film that wishes to articulate an idea of Hollywood in a state of subliminal penitence, and attempts to do so through one of its more esoteric genres, Annette has every right to be proudly eccentric. This is an atypical vision of Tinsel Town stars and starlets, so too should its depiction of their romance be, their self-immolating machinations, and expressions of their pathology. It may not be the kind of film you can sing along to, and one would sure as hell hope it’s not the kind of film you can relate to, but there is a quiet admiration to be had in it simply existing in the manner it chooses to. It’s just enough, as the film humbly suggests, to tell a friend.