Each of the film’s four lead characters are artists. The song, “May We Start?” collects the writers, the directors, the cast, the backing vocalists, everybody as they ask permission to begin the film.Īnnette is a film about the relationship between performers and their audiences. And that Overture (albeit, a figurative one with lyrics) is filmed by Carax with stunning, gorgeous virtuosity, highlighted by a single tracking shot that’s gonna be taught in film schools side-by-side with Orson Welles’ opening tracking shot in Touch of Evil.Īnnette‘s beginning isn’t just an Overture. Like all good operas, Annette begins with an Overture. And that dialogue, like many of the exchanges between the story’s characters, takes on the form of the singing of a round… that eventually harmonizes the past and the present. The film is a beautifully crafted dialogue with opera’s past. Blind, Deaf, and Dumb Pinball Wizards may be awesome, but they don’t have antecedents from, or build upon, Carmen, Madame Butterfly, La Bohème and Otello (and a slew of others) the way that Annette does. But Annette accepts the challenge of grappling with the themes, motifs, and emotional hyperbole of classical opera. Yes, Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar and American Idiot and to a certain extent Quadrophenia are rock operas. Annette is an innovation among rock operas, because it has the bravery to go backward a century or two in order to go forward. I want to gird you, the reader, for the insanity and beauty of Annette (for which I was unprepared), and to not undermine that insanity and beauty.Īnnette is a rock opera, with songs and story written by the brothers Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks (profiled earlier this year in Edgar Wright’s documentary, The Sparks Brothers).

So much so, that writing this review is a tightrope walk. It’s hard, when your brain is starved for REM sleep, to process a movie brimming with dream-like images from the guy who brought us Holy Motors, especially when that movie clocks in at almost two and a half hours.īut I had an itch at the back of my head telling me I might be wrong, especially since that itch kept manifesting itself as scenes from the movie that I couldn’t stop thinking about. This last factor, especially, was a mistake. Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard in Annette.įirst time I saw Leos Carax’s Annette, I went in cold, without even having seen the trailer. I want to gird you, readers, for the insanity and beauty of Annette.Īnnette, directed by Leos Carax.

Rock opera