A fantastical fever dream that’s hard to follow or enjoy: Annette reviewed

Leos Carax is the director whose films have always been wilfully odd. Ron and Russell Mael (the brothers from the band Sparks) have also always been wilfully odd. Annette is a collaboration between the three and is therefore wilfully odd in spades. Starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, it is a fantastical, fever-dreamish, sung-through rock opera and I bet you won’t see a more wilfully odd film this year. As regular readers will know, I am generally fond of any film that busts all known Hollywood formats. Yet while I tried with every fibre of my being to like Annette I did not entirely succeed.

The original idea came from the Mael brothers who are currently enjoying a moment, having been the subject of a recent Edgar Wright documentary. (That said, they were no more knowable by the end than they were at the outset. We didn’t even learn why that moustache.)