Annette

“Annette may be named for one of its female characters, but make no mistake: The story belongs to her father.”

Title: Annette (2021)
Director: Leos Carax 👨🏼🇫🇷
Writers: Ron Mael 👨🏼🇺🇸 and Russell Mael 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Alicja Johnson 👩🏼🇺🇸

—SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 2.5/5

Nothing intrigues our culture more than a good celebrity couple. (Exhibit A: The internet’s explosion over the Bennifer reunion earlier this summer.) In Amazon Studios’ imagined universe of Annette, audiences gain an enticing peek into the love affair between two stars: Avant-garde comedian Henry McHenry (Adam Driver) and renowned opera performer Ann Desfranoux (Marion Cotillard). Unfortunately, the musical doesn’t quite deliver on that promise.

For one thing, writers Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks used 42 pieces of recorded music along with lyrics sheets full of dialogue and stage directions as their screenplay. The unconventional approach results in a disjointed narrative that often challenges our ability to suspend disbelief. For example, Henry’s polarizing stand-up—which he always performs clad in boxer briefs and a terry cloth robe—gets plenty of screen time. But he’s just not funny. So when we see snippets of his material, meant to mark the rise and fall of his career, we only see him transition from “unamusing and offensive” to “even less amusing and more offensive.” While comedy tends to be subjective, it’s hard to imagine anyone laughing at a man seriously recounting a tall tale about killing his wife. The plot depends on viewers buying into Henry’s success and subsequent failure, and the unconvincing story arc is just one symptom of an overall incoherent screenplay.

But the music takes the cake as the worst part of Annette. Written by the Sparks brothers, the lyrics to their dissonant melodies prove that not all artists should compose musical scores. The libretto for nearly every song consists of a single phrase, repeated ad nauseam. Musical numbers in film can serve a variety of different purposes, from exploring a character’s motivations to heightening drama to developing a recurring theme. It’s anyone’s guess as to what Annette’s music wishes to convey, and the film would have been so much better as a simple drama. It feels like a waste that we never get to understand what makes Ann or Henry tick.

Gender: 3/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE

Annette may be named for one of its female characters, but make no mistake: The story belongs to her father, Henry McHenry. Before the eponymous baby enters the picture, we get to know Ann and Henry as a couple. Yet the focus feels unbalanced, with the comedian (and his career) receiving more of the spotlight. Whenever we do see Ann, it’s usually to show her fears and uncertainty about Henry. Even as Ann gives birth to Annette, the camera focuses on her husband making jokes and asking a nurse if he’s “doing everything right.” Worst of all, Ann dies before we’re halfway through the film.

Baby Annette doesn’t get treated much better. Portrayed by a marionette puppet for most of the movie (but meant to be a real human baby within the story), Annette puts a strain on her parents’ relationship, steering the family straight into a storm that results in her mother dying at sea. After Ann’s death, Henry discovers that his precious child has the singing voice of an angel and sets off with her on a world tour, raking in profits from her miraculous talent.

The movie seems to revel in objectifying Annette, in part because she’s played by a literal object. While director Leos Carax only used the doll for logistical reasons, the fact that she exists in the story so that Henry can exploit her for his own profit feels dehumanizing to Annette. To Carax’s credit, actress Devyn McDowell takes over the puppet’s role in a final scene that shows an older Annette visiting her father in jail, as if to suggest that her freedom from Henry’s oppression has transformed her into a real person. It could almost be a statement about the debilitating impact of abuse, but the film’s prioritization of the offender’s experience significantly dulls any potential message.

On the plus side, Annette includes a rare sex-positive moment. You guessed it—we’re talking about Henry performing oral sex on Ann while he sings. The moment has generated a surprising amount of media attention and helps balance the double standard for sexually active men and women, an urgently necessary task. The entertainment world has long treated female pleasure as taboo. It was just this June that DC nixed a scene from the Harley Quinn series in which Batman was to give Catwoman some head, arguing “heroes don’t do that.” Or consider that in an early season of Grey’s Anatomy, studio executives barred characters from saying the word “vagina” while allowing “penis” to be uttered 97 times. Given such stigmatization, Ann’s receipt of oral sex in Annette may only last a few seconds in the film, but has outsized impact.

Annette’s producers also deserve a nod for hiring director of photography Caroline Champetier and film editor Nelly Quettier. Up until 2018, cinematography was the last Oscar category to never see a female nominee, a microcosm of the larger gender gap within a profession that can contribute to the male gaze of a given film. As for film editing, although women typically occupied this role during the silent era, they were “systematically purged” as the job gained more prestige. To this day, the industry hasn’t achieved parity in either trade, so it’s great to see Annette enlist Champetier and Quettier.

Race: 1/5

Though the film takes place in present day Los Angeles, you wouldn’t know it from Annette’s casting. White actors play all named characters, which hardly reflects the city’s modest 52% white population. When actors of color do take the stage, it’s for mere seconds. Though the producers hail from a number of different countries, it’s clear that racial diversity was not a priority for Annette.

Mediaversity Grade: D 2.17/5

It’s disappointing that the picture honored with opening this year’s Cannes Film Festival cared so little about meaningful representation. Had Carax given more thought to his female characters, Annette might have been undeniably feminist. The potential certainly exists. But any inclusive gains are overshadowed by the film’s whitewashing of Los Angeles.

Like Annette? Try these other titles named after women but really about men.

Grade: DLiSeptember 2, 2021