Annette (2021)

Carax has an unparalleled knack for constructing scenes that feel like vividly remembered dreams – some of the images here carry such a strange dual charge, by turns eerie and drily comic, that you find yourself wondering afterwards if they actually happened, or if your subconscious has been playing join-the-dots.

I suspect that, if nothing else, this astoundingly beautiful picture will stand the test of time.

Sure, the carnivalesque twist of the final hour is a touch heavy-handed, and it’s not the only one. Yet as the movie settles into a quiet, somber finale, life and performance collapse into a single contorted mass and Annette becomes a metaphor for its own bumpy ride. Hovering on the brink of collapse, it’s a delicate dance between genius and fiasco, much like Henry himself.

Annette is a forthright and declamatory and crazy spectacle, teetering over the cliff edge of its own nervous breakdown, demanding that we feel its pain, feel its pleasure and take it seriously.

It’s hard not to feel stirred, even moved, by the sheer improbable fact of this picture’s existence: Moment by moment, you’re held by its loony flights of lyricism and gorgeous images (shot by Caroline Champetier), and by the mix of sincerity, irony and Sondheimian dissonance that animates every sung-through line.