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More lyrical than musical. More psycho-melodrama than love story with exclamation point. He & she, beautiful and damned. Side A and side B of the hell-heaven of the couple, struggling with success, motherhood and fatherhood, the ability to make people smile, the desire to cancel each other out in the storms of love. The best of Annette lies in existential phrasing, in giving himself generously, but only in the first part of the film, when the story is at the abicì, still positive and mysteriously romantic. When the conditions are laid and the stage is set. The worst comes in the second half of the play, when the play declines and the worst feelings emerge. Leos Carax tells the fairy tale of Henry McHenry (an explosive Adam Driver), comedian of stand up provocative, muscular, a real antipaticone, and of the soprano Ann Defrasnoux (the sweet Marion Cotillard). Theirs is total love, without reservations, but with large dark areas, ambiguity, resistance.
Henry, whose nickname is “The Ape of God”, the monkey of God, he shows off in his underwear, with a boxer robe. Lying down, he confesses his discomfort, says unpleasant things. Irony is anger, sarcasm. “Come on, Henry, tell us!” Shouts the audience like in an arena. And he becomes more acidic, irreverent, wicked, hurling his affairs, his thoughts, his crowds into the audience. Ann, on the other hand, lives an inch off the ground. Pure spirit, a nightingale. Easy to deceive her, bring her into ecstasy and knock her out. He, finished the show, says: “I destroyed them.” Her: «I saved them».
The newspapers get married with that charming couple, and when Ann gets pregnant the covers multiply. The two met in Los Angeles and have lived in love with the honor of the world ever since. The title Annette is the daughter of Henry and Ann on which all the affection and pain of daddy pours when Ann leaves him alone and he, involved in the intrigue of that strange disappearance, he realizes that the little girl is a special creature.
A hymn to the show with a capital S, to the strength of music and imagination thanks also to the songs of Sparks, Ron and Russel Mae. Leos Carax, famous for Blood Red, Pont-Neuf lovers, Holy Motors, it almost never goes for the subtle. With Annette, the first English-language film of his career as well as the first encounter with the musical, widens his lungs looking for the choral, polyphonic, sour, broadwayan opera. It tells of a multiple identity crisis: of a model of culture, of artists, of fathers, of men. With a visionary point of view, he speaks of absolute happiness and the impossibility of reaching it, of the manhood imprisoned by possession, of the emotional disconnection and of the depression with self-destructive fury that can ensue. Uneven, evocative work, with at least three memorable scenes, starting from the overture to the La La Land in which all the characters, including the director and crew, sing in the street. Driver and Cotillard are so different that they seem really made for each other to a certain extent.

ANNETTE by Leos Carax
(France-USA, 2021, duration 140 ‘)

con Adam Driver, Marion Cottillard, Simon Helberg, Devyn McDowell, James Reade Venable
Rating: *** out of 5
In the halls

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