Almost 10 years after Holy Motors, Leos Carax marks his comeback with Annette, one of his most accessible, but no less fascinating works. Best Director Award at Cannes more than justified, this true opera orchestrated by the Sparks shines by its many facets, and long after its viewing will haunt you by its dark motifs and themes. Henry McHenry (Adam Driver), a well-known and acclaimed stand-up star, and Ann Desfranoux (Marion Cotillard), a singer also famous worldwide, are a dissonant but passionate couple. After the birth of their daughter Annette, and while Ann goes on a world tour to perform her operas, Henry does not live well the fame of his wife, while his career crumbles after difficult shows. As the couple tear each other apart violently in front of their daughter, their love story takes a much more disturbing and tragic turn, each sinking into an endless abyss of revenge and guilt. From her first sequence incredible by her ingenuity, Annette places herself as a being apart from the cinema: this scene where sound and image have never been so well tuned, and this preamble where the actors parade as if preparing behind the scenes for the drama that will be played, suggest from the first moments of an original work, powerful and whole. And the film never disappoints, fulfilling all its promises in an anguish that grows little by little. 
Musical tragedy masterfully orchestrated by the Sparks
It is the Sparks themselves who open Annette's ball, after the brief appearance of Leos Carax as producer, as it is they who will come to win the prize for directing at Cannes. A very strong symbol for "the favorite band of your favorite band" (according to Edgar Wright, who will release a documentary very soon on the two brothers and their mythical music): after two film projects that will not have seen the light of day, it is finally an achievement for the creators of a genre in its own right. And to say that the whole film is based on his music would certainly be quite reductive in view of the work done on the images and their impact, but still revealing the agreement found between the two. Almost all the dialogues are sung, and the orchestra accompanies in every moment the characters and their inner storms, sometimes to play a role in their own right as in this wonderful scene where Simon Helberg (well known for his role in Big Bang Theory) gives himself up in front of the musicians who embody all his torments. 
If the music is quickly put in place to create this special atmosphere for Annette , the story itself allows itself to play on a much slower tempo. Everything is built piece by piece, offering the viewer in each sequence an additional key to his understanding, so that the whole first part can seem quite long, abstract and distant. Henry and Ann only present themselves through their role on stage, trying to camouflage their inner torments and demons. Until the birth of Annette, where all the evil crystallizes to give the film a completely different hue.
[Be careful, this part may reveal important elements of the film; we advise you to see it before reading the following lines.]
From that fateful moment, Annette 's theme is revealed in all its darkness: because if you expected to see a new La La Land, you are far from it. No, Annette is rather part of a tragic MeToo news, and highlights the toxic and violent masculinity, which creeps in like a shadow and slowly takes its place without warning. And we must now salute the incredible performance of Adam Driver, who holds the film from start to finish, giving his character this aura so scary, which emerges from the first moments without being perfectly identifiable ; As if he were given the benefit of the doubt, when all the clues are there. That black gaze, those hands that approach from behind, ready to embrace as to strangle, these almost violent tickles, this green symbol of death and demons that accompany it everywhere, then later the grotesque dreams, the reactions that leave no room for assumptions. Annette slowly plunges into the abyss of fatal despair, as Henry likes to remind us in Nietzschean impulses of conscience.
"Whoever fights monsters must be careful not to become a monster himself. And if you look at an abyss for a long time, the abyss also looks within you." Nietzsche
Between tale and Hollywood déjà vu, the culture of appearance accused
While the film is gradually built on this increasingly dark theme, another emerges slowly, but interferes just as much as the first: an unexpected trial to the culture of appearance and the stage, of art even more generally, surfaces, posing a frightening observation of the image perceived and returned by each of the characters. We mentioned it a little before, but this distance from the film in the whole first hour is largely due to this appearance, this smoothed and impersonal media image. At first, we only discover Henry and Ann separately on stage, speaking or singing to their audience, in a characterization that wants to mark a cold and detached distance. And if everything seems so wrong, it is because the scene is the center and the beginning of all action in Annette : everything is played on stage before entering reality, questions, fears, revelations, violence, guilt, remorse. And yet, even if this culture and all that comes with it seems to be under fire, Annette remains impregnated from start to finish with this art. The poetry of the images and shots emerges at every moment, the sumptuously tragic scenes at sea sound like echoes of old mythical Hollywood productions. Leos Carax waltzes on references and déjà vu, to bring out the best in a staging always ambitious and dizzying. 
All this culture is of course also fed by the tale, since Annette will draw on this imagination on multiple occasions, making her heroine both Snow White and her evil and ghostly alter-ego, the couple a revisit without happy ending of Beauty and the Beast , from little Annette a Pinocchio exploited and used by a greedy father and a vengeful mother (sometimes placing the aggressor and his victim on the same level a little quickly), until his final deliverance. Rereadings and interpretations that modernize amorous passions, human guilt and violent failings, in conclusions sometimes as dark as the works of the Brothers Grimm could be. A true bold and poetic success, Annette develops with richness many themes and motifs, without ever getting lost. Adam Driver signs a memorable performance, while the music of the Sparks still resonates in our heads. A very beautiful film, which will certainly be in our top of this year 2021.
Trailer Annette de Leos Carax, to discover at the cinema:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf4gJl6Uq5U
