The Weird and Wonderful World of Leos Carax’s Annette

A sense of ominousness looms over Leos Carax’s Annette, newly streaming on Prime Video, almost from the feel-good prologue, where the cast warns of “a tale of songs and fury and no taboo…and if you want us to kill for you, we may agree.” What follows is a lot of singing about death, dying, and killing; Adam Driver’s large hands reaching for Marion Cotillard; and some very menacing tickling.

If you count yourself a member of the Adam Driver fandom, you’ll find much to appreciate about Annette, as Carax is obviously also an admirer. As Henry McHenry, Driver—a first-time producer with this film—makes full use of his sheer physicality in two impressive sets of stand-up comedy. His character is primal, the so-called Ape of God, laden with all the familiar bad-boy trappings—the trifecta of a motorcycle, leather jacket, and long hair; his pre-show routine includes jumping rope, smoking, gobbling a banana, and shadowboxing.

His is a berating, reprehensible form of comedy, teeming with preening bravado and punctuated by mooning the audience as he leaves the stage. (In an art-meets-life moment, Driver lit up a cigarette and blew smoke into the camera filming him during Annette’s standing ovation at Cannes—the same premiere where, according to Variety, hundreds of people walked out halfway through.) As others have pointed out, this character could easily be Girls’s Adam Sackler a few years on.

Cotillard’s Ann, by contrast, is delicate: She sings about being afraid of someone; wanders shivering through a forest in a nightie; smokes furtively; noshes on apples; and dies gracefully, numerous times. It’s a shame that Cotillard didn’t have a comparable chance to chew scenery, instead functioning merely as a near-perfect object of affection.

The movie doesn’t always hang together, a consequence, perhaps, of the story first being envisioned to serve a Sparks concept album performed live. The characters are thinly and sometimes haphazardly drawn, and a few visual non sequiturs drift by unexplained: for example, a mysterious growing birthmark on Henry’s face (maybe a mark of the rot inside him?) or a sneezy court clerk. There’s a wealth of ideas—what people will do for fame, what drives people to perform, the idea of children emancipating themselves from their parents, comedy as the only way to tell the truth without being killed—yet few are satisfyingly considered.

But the film is undoubtedly provocative and certainly entertaining, alternately evoking Beauty and the Beast, A Star Is Born, Phantom of the Opera, and Pinocchio. I recommend seeing it on as large a screen as possible (even in a theater, if you feel comfortable) and just letting the music and Hollywood magic—and Driver’s rippled abdomen—sweep over you, even if reading the lyrics “We’re traveling round the world / We’re traveling round the world” over a montage of Henry and Annette running through a series of airports may feel like overkill. After all, this is more of a rock opera than a musical, and in that grand tradition, it’s meant to be felt rather than precisely understood.

Looking for a few more things to watch this weekend? Catch up on the new Liane Moriarty adaptation Nine Perfect Strangers on Hulu; get into the Sandra Oh–fronted drama series The Chair on Netflix; and, on Sunday, check out NYC Epicenters 9/11➔2021½ on HBO, Spike Lee’s sprawling new documentary. 

Originally Appeared on Vogue