We love each other so much

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Films of 2021 

#37 : Annette

Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard brim with nervous energy in this bizarre musical collaboration between Leos Carax and the Sparks brothers, which kicked off this year’s Cannes film festival.

I've heard this is pretty odd and so, like most Sparks albums I've endured, I'm expecting it to be amusingly quirky at times but generally a bit of an endurance test.  I like Adam Driver and Marion Cottilard though, so I have some hope...

And well, it's quite a beginning!  We start off in the recording studio with The Mael brothers recording a song - and then they leave and head outside, picking up Henry (Adam Driver), Ann (Marion Cotillard) and others (whilst still singing the song), walk along the street for a bit and then Adam heads off on his motorbike whilst they all wave goodbye to him.  Obviously, it all makes absolutely no sense - but it's impressive nonsense nonetheless!

We then have 10-15 minutes of Henry's stand-up routine (which he does in his dressing gown) and it's extremely odd - in a kinda engrossing way because you have no idea what's going on.  Literally no idea.  We have another of Henry's stand-up routines later whilst he's having a bit of breakdown and if the first one made no sense, then this one blows it out the water.

And that theme of utter confusion continues throughout the film, pretty much.  There is a plot (or bits of one, anyway) but they often get sidetracked for some weirdness - but it does battle its way through to some form of resolution.  It's somewhat odd that given the two main characters are married, they interact remarkably little throughout the film - this is obviously a conscious decision but seems an odd one.  I'd also comment that Henry spends a LOT of time on his motorbike - for no discernible reason at all.

It all looks very impressive - there's fantastic use of colour throughout the film, some quite inventive camerawork and some interesting use of puppetry (if it's somewhat challengingly quirky at times).  There are also some very interesting ideas on display at times - for example, the crowd at Henry's stand-up often respond in unison (sometimes in song) and it makes for an arresting tableau.

The use of music is also impressive with some well put together numbers in there but it's also, err, interesting because it pops up in the weirdest places - at one point, Henry breaks off from giving Marion oral sex to sing a line (which I suspect might prove to be a little distracting) and the childbirth scene is also set to a musical number (ditto).  It is possible that some of the song lyrics pushed the plot along and I missed them because I wasn't paying quite enough attention - if so, I'll take some of the blame for this, but only some!

The acting from Adam and Marion is, as you'd expect, of high quality - they've thrown themselves into whatever is asked of them, although you can't help but think they must have been internally shrugging as to exactly why they were doing some of it.  I would also say that Adam is given more to do - possibly because he was keener to ham things up.  Everyone else is fine, but they don't have too much to do - the two main characters (and the puppet!) take up most of our time.  Which is possibly why it took me so long to recognise Simon Helberg (Howard from The Big Bang Theory) as The Accompanist - it was nice to see him playing a (relatively) normal role and he does it well.

My main criticism is that the film is too long - there's just no reason for it to be 2:20.  And it feels longer because of all the weirdness, I'm afraid.  So, my going in position of "amusingly quirky at times but a bit of an endurance test" wasn't far wrong.  On balance, I wouldn't say I exactly enjoyed it but there was a lot to admire there and I'm glad I stuck with it until the end, but I can see that plenty of people would have quit pretty quickly amidst much eye-rolling.  And I can't say I'd entirely blame them - I suspect I'd have done the same under normal circumstances.

At the time of writing, it's available to watch on Amazon Prime and, since it's an Amazon film, I'm guessing it will be there for some time.  Whether you want to watch it or not probably depends on your tolerance for nonsense...

#38 - Not a good film.
#36 - A promising premise not quite fulfilled.