KEITH UHLICH
Annette
film roundup
Annette (Dir. Leos Carax). Starring: Adam Driver, Marion Cotillard, Simon Helberg. Everunpredictable French filmmaker Leos Carax (Holy Motors) and eccentric pop band Sparks, comprised of brother duo Ron and Russell Mael, team up for this sprawling, tone-shifting masterpiece of a rock opera. A love affair between a crude, confrontational stand-up comedian (Adam Driver) and a beloved opera singer (Marion Cotillard) begets high emotion, brutal tragedy, and a “miracle” of a daughter, Annette, who is treated less as a person than as a prized possession with a short, exploitable shelf-life. The film is a parable in song—the lyrics often tending toward mantra-like repetitiveness—about the harm we do to ourselves and others. It leans conceptually hard into con12
ICON | SEPTEMBER 2021 | ICONDV.COM
cerns of the moment (see the #MeToo-esque musical interlude), and in the process lays the groundwork for its heartbreaking final scene between parent and child, certainly one of the most devastatingly personal things Carax has ever shot. [R] HHHHH Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.01 Thrice Upon a Time (Dirs. Hideaki Anno, Mahiro Maeda, Katsuichi Nakayama, Kazuya Tsurumaki). Starring: Megumi Ogata, Megumi Hayashibara, Yûko Miyamura. The four-movie “rebuild” of influential anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion concludes in this two-and-half-hour animated blockbuster that is quite entertaining, yet still has a “too much and not enough” feel. It was always going to be difficult to follow the series’
prior finale, 1997’s The End of Evangelion. That supreme work of art visualized the death and rebirth of mankind in nerve-shreddingly visceral fashion, reflecting the manic-depressive headspace in which the show’s creator Hideaki Anno, a Hayao Miyazaki protégé, was then ensconced. Thrice Upon a Time, by contrast, is the product of a mellower, more hopeful man who is also working with less constraints emotionally and economically. Though Anno wrote the screenplay, the army of technicians and co-directors he has at his disposal unfortu-
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