Annette

There is a moment early in Annette where the entire cast, led by the eccentric pop-duo Sparks, marches out of a recording studio and onto the streets of Los Angeles, singing a meta-plea for the audience to finally let the show begin. It’s a Fourth-Wall-shattering invitation that feels less like an opening number and more like a dare. If you don't climb aboard this particular ship during those first five minutes, you’re going to have a very long, very confusing two hours ahead of you.

I watched this on a Tuesday night while trying to ignore a persistent itch from a new wool sweater, which, in retrospect, perfectly mirrored the prickly, uncomfortable energy radiating from the screen. This isn’t a "comfort" movie. It’s a high-wire act performed over a pit of emotional acid, and it’s easily one of the most daring things to come out of the post-pandemic streaming gold rush.

The Gospel According to Sparks

To understand Annette, you have to understand the Maels. Ron and Russell Mael, the minds behind the band Sparks, have been the "coolest band you’ve never heard of" for fifty years. In 2021, they had a major cultural moment—Edgar Wright released a documentary about them, and then Leos Carax (the madman behind Holy Motors) brought their long-gestating rock opera to life.

The music here isn't your standard Broadway fare. There are no "I Want" songs or catchy radio earworms. Instead, we get repetitive, obsessive mantras. Characters sing their mundane thoughts ("We love each other so much") and their deepest anxieties over and over until the words lose meaning and become a rhythmic pulse. It’s hypnotic, and frankly, it’s a movie that hates the concept of a 'hook' just enough to make you obsessed with it. While most contemporary musicals try to be Hamilton, Annette is content being a gothic fever dream that feels like it was filmed in the basement of a haunted opera house.

The Ape and the Nightingale

At the center of this madness is Adam Driver as Henry McHenry, a stand-up comedian whose "act" looks more like a ritualistic deconstruction of masculinity. He wears a green bathrobe like a heavyweight boxer and stalks the stage, mocking his audience. Adam Driver is a force of nature here; he’s massive, sweaty, and genuinely terrifying. He’s the "Ape" to Marion Cotillard’s "Nightingale." Cotillard, playing the world-renowned opera singer Ann Desfranoux, provides the film’s tragic soul. Her performance is ethereal, often seen through the soft glow of stage lights or the mist of a doomed yacht trip.

Then, there’s the baby. When Ann gives birth to their daughter, Annette, the film makes its most divisive choice: the child is a wooden puppet. Not a CGI creation, not a "real" baby, but a jointed, slightly uncanny marionette. It’s a brilliant move. By making the child a literal puppet, Leos Carax highlights how Henry and the world at large view her—not as a human being, but as a talent to be exploited, a prop in their own domestic drama.

Why This Vanished Into the Abyss

Despite opening the Cannes Film Festival and having a "Best Actor" caliber performance from Adam Driver, Annette basically fell off the face of the earth. Why? It’s the "streaming void" effect. Amazon Studios dropped this in mid-2021 when theaters were still shaky and audiences were hungry for light, escapist fare. Annette is the opposite of escapism; it’s a confrontation.

It also cost $15 million and made back about $3 million. In the era of franchise dominance, a sung-through musical about a comedian who may or may not be a murderer and his puppet daughter is a hard sell for the algorithm. It didn't fit the "prestige drama" box perfectly, and it was far too weird for the casual Friday night scroller. It’s a film that demands you sit in the dark and pay attention, something that’s increasingly rare in our "second-screen" viewing habits.

Simon Helberg (yes, Howard from The Big Bang Theory) also turns in a career-best performance as The Accompanist. There is a scene where he conducts an orchestra while the camera circles him in a dizzying, single-take confession that is worth the price of admission alone. It’s the kind of technical bravado that reminds you why we still need "theatrical" cinema, even if we’re watching it on a laptop.

Annette is a magnificent, messy, and wildly ambitious anomaly. It’s the kind of film that reminds me why I love movies—not because it’s "perfect," but because it’s so singularly the vision of its creators that it couldn't possibly have been made by a committee. It’s a dark fairy tale for an era of toxic celebrity and stage-managed lives. If you have two hours and want to see Adam Driver give a performance that feels like it was forged in a volcano, find this on Prime Video before it disappears into the digital ether forever. It’s weird, it’s loud, and it’s beautiful.

May we start? Yes, absolutely.