Marion Cotillard in Annette (2021)

Update: There is another sex scene with Marion Cotillard, and that action does include nudity (below).


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According to the Hollywood Reporter (yesterday):

“Cotillard was back on the Croisette this summer for her latest competition entry, Leos Carax’s experimental musical Annette, which opened the festival and closed with a best director prize. In the film — which releases on Amazon Prime Video on Friday — she plays a world-famous opera singer who is in a passionate relationship with an unpredictable stand-up comedian, played by Adam Driver. Their lives get turned upside down after the birth of their first child, a baby girl named Annette who is best described as, well, a doll.”

Leos Carax, the former wunderkind, is 60 now, and only makes about one movie every six or seven years, so the cineastes anticipate them eagerly. They love him at Cannes, but I’ve never liked any of his films, and I don’t suppose this would be an exception. Weird, pretentious films are not my thing in general, so I’m especially not eager to see one with singing. Even Robert Downey Jr couldn’t charm The Singing Detective into a watchable film.

The reviews were polarized. BBC called it “kitsch” and Hollywood Reporter said, “Carax’s trademark bonkers magic elevates many of these scenes, to be sure. But there’s also a nagging naiveté, even a silliness to the storytelling that kept bumping me out of the sluggish drama.” On the other side of the ledger, New York Magazine said, “This astoundingly beautiful picture will stand the test of time.” New York Magazine is trying hard to match the Village Voice for always being outrageously wrong in film criticism while declaring their ill-considered opinions as pompously as possible, so you might approach that declaration of immortality with just a soupcon of healthy skepticism.