Annette
Amazon StudiosBringing the same reverence and confusion to Annette that they provide with their music, scriptwriting duo and musical collaborators, Sparks, shoulder the burden of oddness inherent to this Adam Driver-led feature. They are crafty oddities of the artistically free world, but the pop duo’s sudden breach into the mainstream – in part thanks to Edgar Wright’s documentary, The Sparks Brothers – has been a surprise. Not least because they are the counter-culture heroes for many art-pop fans, but because when they apply this glam rock showcase to Annette, their main draw as artists comes crumbling down. The beauty is in their ambiguity as performers, but film is fickle when broader artists try and adapt their unique individuality to an advertisable, broader current. That is the issue Annette has to deal with.
Flickering lights and shots fading into one another almost at random, Annette shows the signs of avant-garde design choices. But then, so are Sparks. It inhibits the qualities of the duo, and much of the film relies on their music. A blessing for those that enjoy the music of this pop duo, but narratively, it is meaningless. “May we start?” the opening tune drones on and on, introducing the audience to Driver, Simon Helberg, and Marion Cotillard. While Annette takes the bold step to introduce elements of the musical genre, they are not used in a way that benefits the narrative. They are used to introduce a setting, but they are never deployed in a way that develops these characters.
Nothing is told, and nothing is gained either. Leos Carax has a usual setlist and variety, but none of them has anything within. There’s no depth to be displayed. Instead, much of Annette feels like a project for Ron and Russell Mael to explore their craft. But they have done so on their albums already, and much of the key moments within Annette will depend on how an audience perceives their music. They are oddities of the genres they inhibit, but transitioning to the silver screen feels like a misstep not just because they are ill-prepared, but because they do not have much to say. Their music does not either, a novelty setlist of strange tricks and often toying with the process of creation. That much doesn’t work on a vanity project set for a two-hour running time, primarily because their process of artistic elimination is slow, odd, and never braces itself for the harsh realities of narrative conformity.
Ambitious, overbearing, and just a tad off-putting, Annette holds within it a strong Driver performance, but what film with him in does not? He rolls with the punches, and his work here as a successful stand-up comedian is far more interesting when he is left to his own devices. Whenever the Mael brothers strike their influence through the feature, it falls apart. The puppet itself, that eponymous narrative peddler, is probably a vision of something. Sparks would do well to display that in their music, but visualising that makes for a broad idea, a message that cannot be explained because there isn’t anything to say. Neither the characters, writers or director can convey whatever meaning is meant here. Carax’s fascination with these characters reveals little, if anything, about the horrors Annette tries to show. They are too broad, too inconclusive. Sparks’ craft is vague, it is a trivial beauty to listen to, but a horrid bore to watch.