Review of Annette (2021) by Ibbste — 09 Aug 2021

In Annette, director Leos Carax maximizes on its artifice and melodrama to explore more profound truths than a dozen movies of one “cinematic universe” can deliver these days. Annette, after all, is mostly represented by just a wooden marionette caught in the midst of a chorus of sound, fury, and every possibly stormy connotation in between.

But even at the start, the film incorporates itself into a surreal world of odd musicality ruled by familiar figures of violently toxic masculinity — too often excused and encouraged to indulge a mythos of "tortured genius" — providing an uncomfortable mirror to our times in spite of some levity from their sung-along dialogue.