On November 22, 1960, Carax was born in Suresnes, France. He was born into a wealthy middle-class family. His father was a reporter for the French scientific newspaper and his mother was a film critic for the New York Pioneer Forum. It is worth mentioning that this newspaper appeared in Godard's work "Exhausted".
The work and identity of his parents had a great influence on Karax, and the occupation of his parents laid a very important foundation for his later directing career. Karax, who became a director, was highly praised by industry insiders. He is known as the most talented "filmmaker" in contemporary French cinema.
In the 1980s, our film creators such as Wu Tianming, Xie Tieli, Xie Jin and other directors explored the path of film in literature, while Leo Carax, Jean-Jacques Benaix, Luc Bey Pine and other directors set off a trend of "glamour movies" in Europe.
The so-called "glamour film" refers to the trend of focusing on visual effects, but this is not the same as Hollywood's visual blockbuster. On the contrary, "glamour film" makes the film more enjoyable through the introduction of visual effects, while retaining the artistic quality. At the same time, it also takes into account the commercial nature of the film.
However, Carax and Luc Besson and Jean-Jacques Benaix took two very different paths. Jean Jacques Benaix and Luc Besson pay more attention to the content of the film, they are used to creating under the framework of genre films and pay attention to the integrity of the film story.
Carax, on the other hand, has inherited the tradition of the "author's film" in the history of French cinema, under the influence of which Carax's films are like Borges' text labyrinths, full of puzzling details and fragments. . Walking through Karax's cinematic labyrinth, we see carefully designed, unexpected, and dazzling stories.
In his new work "Annette", what we see is a willful director using his talent to build a visual maze. The main scene of the film is the stage, and the characters interpret their lives on different stages. When their lives overlap, stage and life also gradually overlap.
The husband Henry played by Adam Driver is a comedian whose career is gradually declining, and the wife Ann played by Marion Cotillard is an opera star whose career is gradually reaching the peak. All the contradictions in the film revolve around the two. Personal career changes. It is not the first time that such a plot has appeared on the screen. What is special about "Annette" is that Karax breaks the barrier between film and stage play, and he shows us the infinite possibilities of the film form.
From the plot of the movie itself, "Annette" still continues the movie themes that Karax is good at: dislocated love, lonely "storyteller", taboo and instinct.
Henry and Ann were a well-matched couple when they first married, and their love was strong. As their careers diverged, love turned into jealousy. When Henry's talk show stopped making people laugh, his inner demon was unleashed. At this time, Ann boarded a bigger stage and won more attention. Ultimately, jealousy killed their once strong love.
Karax tells a commonplace love story in a very sophisticated way, but it's no ordinary movie. Karax connects the stage in the film with the real life in the film with original artificial scenes, so that the two different worlds maintain their independent artistry. There is no dizzying visual design, no dizzying action design, and the simple, even juggling actions make the story full of lingering charm.
If you compare "Annette" with the rest of Karax's work, "Annette" is not the most special one. Conversely, the overly formalistic "Annette" is narratively hollow. The introduction of puppet children added a lot of fun to the movie, but it also lost some of the flexibility of life itself.
In Karax's past movies, we can always see the magic of "movie genius":
The film "Boys and Girls" composed of accident and fragments uses a "reticular narrative" method to let us see the reasonable and unexpected in life in the fragments.
In "Bad Blood", which revolves around "STBO", Karax uses a lot of shots to show non-narrative passages, such as dialogue, playfulness, juggling, body gestures, etc. These parts that are disconnected from the narrative are not completely disintegrated The narrative of the film itself, on the contrary, these shots give "Bad Blood" a touch of "magic strokes".
In addition to telling the love story of Lovers at New Bridge, which revolves around a pair of lovers who are destined to never be together, Karax also uses a lot of surreal representations to "embellish" the film. Fireworks show, burning underground passage, Michelle's dream about killing her boyfriend. Without these surreal episodes full of symbols, the film would have been "excluded" from film history.
In addition, there are "Paula X" with the most complete narrative and "Sacred Car Dealer" with a completely fragmented narrative. If Annette is compared to these films, aside from being more stylistically significant, it's not significantly better than Karax's other films.
But "Annette" still offers a creative perspective: how else can the story be told.
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