Review: 'Annette' is a dark romance, propelled by Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard's performances and the emotionally direct music of Sparks

It’s unlikely that audiences at this year’s Cannes Film Festival had seen anything quite like “Annette,” director Leos Carax’s boundary-breaking romantic musical drama — and now that this bizarre, borderline magical movie is making its way to theaters (and, in two weeks, to Prime video), moviegoers everywhere can scratch their heads while tapping their feet.

The movie opens with Ron and Russell Mael, the brothers who comprise the legendary art-pop band Sparks (recently immortalized in Edgar Wright’s documentary “The Sparks Brothers”) in the studio. They’re singing the opening track of the musical, “So Now Let’s Start,” which they wrote, along with the other songs in the film. 

The Mael brothers then walk to the exits, still singing, and onto the Los Angeles streets, their back-up singers following behind. Then they’re met by the movie’s stars — Adam Driver, Marion Cotillard and Simon Helberg — not yet in character, singing the song. It’s an exhilarating opening, reminiscent of the musical break in Carax’s whacked-out 2012 anthology “Holy Motors.”

Driver plays Henry, a stand-up comedian whose confrontational style is embodied in the boxer’s robe he wears when he takes the stage at the Orpheum. Not far away, at Disney Hall, Cotillard’s character, an acclaimed opera star named Ann, is preparing for her performance. Henry and Ann love each other so much — in fact, they sing those words to each other in one number, while riding a motorcycle and later during sex.

Marriage and pregnancy follow, and Henry and Ann’s relationship appears blissful. But then it starts to fall apart, with Henry facing accusations of sexual misconduct — as he spirals out of control, drinking at home, growing jealous of Ann’s accompanist (Helberg), and blowing up his act with increasingly rage-filled rants.

Then the baby, Annette, arrives. I dare not say more about that, other than to praise Carax for a strangely compelling way to depict the alien nature of parenthood.

The songs are the script, and the Mael brothers aren’t exactly masters of clever wordplay. Their lyrics rely on repetition and directness, but they work because they leave room for the performers’ raw emotion to burst through — and with Driver’s muscular intensity and Cotillard’s ethereal grace, there’s no shortage of emotion.

Whether it’s Henry ordering his audiences to laugh or Ann reflecting on her ability to die onstage night after night, “Annette” wraps its romance and its music around an exuberant reflection on the psychic toll of an artistic life. Such a life, Carax and the Mael brothers seem to say, isn’t easy — but, when the result is a stimulating, question-raising work like this, worth the effort.

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‘Annette’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 6, in theaters; available for streaming starting August 20 on Prime Video. Rated R for sexual content including some nudity, and for language. Running time: 140 minutes.