Film

Annette

Name: Annette
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 2021
Cast: Adam Driver, Marion Cotillard, Simon Helberg, Devyn McDowell, Natalia Lafourcade

Family drama

Leos Carax's fever dream of a film, part rock opera, part domestic noir. Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard are a famous couple—him a comedian, her an opera singer—whose daughter Annette is born with an impossible gift. Visually extravagant and tonally unstable, it's for those who want cinema that swings wildly for the fences.

TMDb rating

3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love sung-through musicals that treat every song as a confession, and you don't mind a story that veers from glitzy showbiz satire into something stranger and sadder.

Skip it if you want tidy plotting and hummable tunes, since much of the score is deliberately unsettling and the 140-minute running time asks for real patience.

What it asks of you: Over two and a quarter hours, scenes stretch slowly, most dialogue is sung rather than spoken, and the mood moves between glitter and dread.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Mulholland Drive2001

David Lynch's portrait of ambition and delusion in LA, where performance and reality blur. Like Annette, it's hypnotic, formally daring, and skeptical of celebrity's promises.

But At three hours and with a fractured narrative, it demands your full attention and resists easy interpretation.

A Star Is Born2018

Bradley Cooper's film about a famous couple where one ascends and one falls, with Gaga's raw presence matching Driver's intensity. Both explore what fame does to love and ambition.

But Despite its power, the three-hour runtime and familiar scaffolding feel safer than Annette's willful strangeness.

Passion2013

Brian De Palma's erotic thriller about professional rivalry and obsession between two women. Visually baroque, morally turbulent, and uninterested in your comfort—much like Annette's mood.

But The sexual content is explicit and the plot mechanics sometimes feel more important than the characters.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Annette

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Faces1968

Both films use formal audacity—opera, melody, avant-garde technique—to excavate real marital damage. Cassavetes did it by stripping away artifice; Carax does it by building more up.

John Cassavetes' improvisational drama about infidelity and emotional authenticity in modern America. Shot on 16mm, brutally intimate, it pioneered the emotional rawness Annette reaches for through artifice.

But It's grainy, over three hours, and the naturalistic acting style can feel chaotic compared to scripted drama.

Phantom Thread2017

Paul Thomas Anderson's study of a toxic creative partnership between a demanding designer and the woman who transforms his life. Gorgeously made and psychologically intricate.

But It moves slowly and the power dynamics may frustrate viewers looking for clearer moral stakes.

The Dancer2016

Stéphanie Di Giusto's film about Loïe Fuller, the pioneering dancer whose artistry defined her era. A portrait of ambition, body, and the price of creation, in French with sumptuous visuals.

But It's more impressionistic than narrative-driven, and its pacing is deliberately meditative.

The Lighthouse2019

Robert Eggers' two-hander about masculine obsession and psychological breakdown between two men on an island. Black-and-white, formally inventive, and genuinely unsettling in mood.

But The dialect is thick, the runtime feels long, and the atmosphere is oppressive rather than entertaining.

Under the Skin2014

Jonathan Glazer's haunting sci-fi film about an alien seductress in Scotland. Sparse, hypnotic, and built on performance and mood rather than plot or explanation.

But It's slow, deliberately obscure, and offers no emotional catharsis or clear answers to what you've witnessed.

The Master2012

Paul Thomas Anderson's intimate examination of power, manipulation, and the hunger to believe. Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman give performances that burrow under your skin.

But The film is deliberately fragmented, psychologically murky, and refuses to judge its characters for you.

Holy Motors2012

Leos Carax's (Annette's director) earlier masterpiece: Denis Lavant drives through Paris living multiple lives. It's maximalist, bizarre, and a kind of spiritual predecessor to Annette's ambition.

But It's genuinely bewildering and operates on pure cinema logic rather than narrative sense, which many find exhausting.

8½1963

Both are films *about* the impossibility of marriage and creation coexisting. Both use spectacle and artifice to explore what's broken underneath, and both are formally dazzling about human mess.

Federico Fellini's masterpiece about a film director's creative crisis and romantic confusion in Rome. Surreal, carnivalesque, gorgeously shot in black-and-white—pure cinema as dream logic.

But Its dreamlike structure means plot is secondary; some find it self-indulgent or impenetrably obscure.

Synecdoche, New York2008

Both follow the destructive collision between artistic ego and intimate relationships. Both insist that theater, artifice, and spectacle are the only honest way to approach truth. Both feature a protagonist whose gift or ambition devours everyone around them.

Charlie Kaufman's only film as director: a playwright begins to lose the boundary between his art and his life as he creates an increasingly elaborate theater piece. Dizzying, funny, and genuinely profound.

But It's deliberately confusing, occasionally pretentious, and deeply sad in ways that can feel emotionally draining.