"Annette" is not a conventional film musical, instead seeming like something you'd see in a black box theater with a small cast playing multiple roles and some not-quite-avant-garde staging.
The visual style crossfades between mundane, (nighttime motorcycle rides, the same winking lights of Los Angeles seen from the foothills of so many films), magical realism (opera stages that become moonlit glades), and abstract. Intentionally absurdist TMZ-style segments introduce new phases of the story.
The music is repetitive and wan, with Adam Driver producing many of the same thin, scratchy falsetto sounds as Hugh Jackman in "Les Mis" Marion Cotillard alternately signing for herself and obviously dubbed.
The vocal lines often remind me of sections of Sondheim, when he uses quasi-tonal, wan phrasing such as in the song "Barcelona." He uses it much more sparingly than this score, which seldom builds into much melody. This, of course, could be intentional. The important repeated bit of song "we love each other so much" might actually be intended to ironically suggest desperation and insufficiency in the emotion.
The story is simple and deals with cardboard cutouts of characters, by design-- which is why Annette herself is so strangely effective.
This is her film, after all, though Driver's Henry McHenry-- an edgy, self-loathing standup comedian-- is the central focus, really.
Simon Helberg-- somewhat reprising his accompanist role from "Florence Foster Jenkins" has some of the more interesting moments of acting, and is the subject of a particularly bravura circular tracking shot that's the real filmmaking highlight of the latter part of the film.
All in all, an impressive, if bewildering, fever dream of film that is not the sum of its parts, and doesn't add up to much, but will enchant you with its visuals and haunt you with its oversimplified plainsong.
