Chicago Reader July 30, 2021 You know what you’re in for, and it’s either going to flatten you with joy, as it did me, or it won’t.
This thing called "Annette" has a way of taking up residence in your mind, whether you like it or not. If you’re even the slightest bit...
I don’t know what Annette is, except that it’s Annette, and that it’s unique.
It’s bonkers and totally brilliant.
Overheated and way too full of itself, the Sparks Brothers' ambitious but lame rock opera gets old fast.
The thing that eludes Mr. Carax – as Annette so amply and painfully demonstrates – is balance.
The musical format proves a natural fit for Leos Carax’s love of the visual fantasies created by the cinema’s most basic means of...
The New Republic August 26, 2021 Leos Carax’s movie is an idiosyncratic showcase for an unlikely, idiosyncratic star in Adam Driver…
[I]n this particular cocktail, Carax is boiling lead to Sparks' soda-pop fizz, sucking all the fun from the root-beer float.
The film’s tension between sincerity and falsity is nonstop palpable; virtually every scene threatens to collapse and implode due to the grav...
Vanity Fair July 13, 2021 It’s a dull and long – really long – piece of preening self-regard, all arriving at a pat, obvious point that does not ju...
RogerEbert.com August 4, 2021 An exhilarating and exuberant experience.
So unrestrained and unapologetic about what it’s trying to do, you can’t help but sing along.
Over the course of 139 minutes, it never, ever takes a break from being creatively bizarre.
At long last, cinema Cannes-style is back. May we now start? Mais oui.
Whatever the movie wants to convey about the tortured nature of love, fame, and the toll parenthood can exact is as muddled as lyrics that keep rep...
TIME Magazine August 6, 2021 No matter how much of themselves the filmmakers have poured into it, the payoff is skimpy.
New Statesman September 1, 2021 The difference in Annette is that Driver’s dourness is replicated rather than offset by everything around him. The movie becomes not merely t...
Vive le cinéma, vive la différence!
Chicago Tribune August 4, 2021 A strange, singular film for singularly strange times.
Hovering on the brink of collapse, it’s a delicate dance between genius and fiasco…
Newsday September 5, 2021 A grandiose melodrama in which everyone involved recognizes exactly what the material demands and goes right after it.
Film Companion November 24, 2021 Annette is beautiful, bonkers and genuinely moving.
Annette is sure to be divisive, but it’s a curio that demands to be seen. It’s not as if you get to watch surreal, avant-garde roc...
Thrillist November 23, 2021 Perhaps the puppet Annette should be your bellwether: Either she remains as creepy as she sounds or she blinks her way into your heart. If it&rsquo...
Such wild emotional extremes can only be properly expressed in song, an article of faith that "Annette" embraces with fervid imagination and playfu...
If you think you know musicals, think again.
Is the movie a farce, a metaphor, a noir meditation on fame? But like so many of the best and strangest moments that festivals like this bring...
The film is, at points, truly exhilarating.
It’s daring, original and heroically odd, so it has the right to a few flaws. Failing through ambition is better than its alternative.
The different sensibilities involved rarely mesh together and the songs – mostly thin and unmemorable, more often talky than melodic, with obs...
Carax and Sparks have given us a commendably dense, complex and beautifully acted production. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but&n...
New York Times August 5, 2021 "Annette" masters its own paradoxes.
Whatever its intentions, Annette is remarkable. It’s an exhilarating collision of cinema, live concerts, stage shows, and celebrity culture...
New Yorker August 11, 2021 In the absence of Carax’s typically uninhibited imagination and frank confrontation with his performers, "Annette" stops short of experience...
Clearly Annette is aiming for something surreal, thought-provoking, sexually intense, and tantalizingly dangerous. But I don’t think it...
A wildly melodramatic rock-opera prone to insane flights of desire, despair, and dorkiness, Annette is gloriously artificial, often daring us to ta...
Boston Globe August 12, 2021 Maybe the most inexplicable thing among the movie’s many inexplicabilities is the near-complete waste it makes of an actress as gifted as Cot...
Some will be enchanted and admire its riskiness; others will be exasperated and bored to the backteeth. But that does not make it good.
Irish Times September 8, 2021 For those seeking surprises, spectacle, and shadows, Annette is a marvel like no other.
Still, it’s early days, and, despite its imperfections this dark and unusual film perfectly reflects these dark and unusual times.
The Ringer August 28, 2021 The eccentric new rock musical finds Driver at the height of his highly physical acting powers.
The Spectator September 2, 2021 Ultimately, whether you enjoy Annette will depend on your tolerance for films that never ask you to care. I’m upset I didn’t like...
Globe and Mail August 4, 2021 However sloppy its execution, this is a go-for-broke attempt at breaking and then reassembling the form.
In its mix of angsty formalism and sing-along fun, Annette may be the closest that musical cinema has come to when Brecht and Weill put a knif...
Empire Magazine September 2, 2021 The most original film of 2021, Annette is a ride like no other, a spellbinding waltz in a storm.
News.com.au September 11, 2021 Annette isn’t the most accessible movie for many audiences, especially if they’re not attuned to the melodrama of rock operas. But even...
ReelViews August 18, 2021 At a time when so many movies feel like cookie-cutter representations of better past tellings, there’s more than a little virtue of...
[T]he ultimate problem with this flamboyant, yet oddly oppressive-feeling film is Carax’s bleakly Romantic world view – even working wit...
Financial Times September 1, 2021 Carax is paying attention to the world, it seems. He only asks that it does the same in return.
Detroit News August 5, 2021 Carax blurs the lines between reality and fiction to the point where it’s unclear what is honest and what is make-believe. But just try takin...
New Yorker August 6, 2021 "Annette" is a folie de grandeur, alas, without the grandeur.
Not even a revved-up Driver or songs by the cult art-pop group Sparks can lift the film to its lofty aims.
The Guardian July 6, 2021 It’s a swoon of anxiety and rapture.
An anti La La Land with dashes of Pinocchio, Annette is a fitting curtain-raiser to a Cannes like no other.
The Guardian September 5, 2021 At the heart of its swirling strangeness lies something of real truth and beauty…
The Atlantic August 19, 2021 The conundrum rattled me after I left the theater… More than the constant singing, that’s the way Annette most resembles the sublime tra...
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