Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo are using their powers for good. The ending sequence is one of the most startling and emotional scenes 2021 brought to the screen. The music, by Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks (subject of Edgar Wright’s first documentary, earlier this year) is circular and repetitive in a way that makes it viciously catchy, but that also drives home the themes, as the characters wallow in their emotions, getting caught up in destructive cycles they can’t break themselves. When he’s left alone to raise their young daughter (played, in a chillingly symbolic decision, by a puppet), he turns her into a star too, and devotes himself to running her career. Driver plays a superstar comedian married to a superstar opera singer (Marion Cotillard), whose success pushes him to jealousy and resentment. Typical for Carax, Annette is an incredible oddball project - in a year of many, many musicals, this musical stood out for its surrealism and vivid visual and emotional attacks on the senses. But he hit his most startling mark of the year in Annette, Leos Carax’s first film since 2012’s stunning Holy Motors. Adam Driver seems to be in every other movie that hits the screen these days, doing that weird, intense thing he loves to do.
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