I saw Annette twice and would go again in a heartbeat. I think Adam Driver’s straining voice can be aggravating, but is also symbolic of Henry McHenry’s character straining under the pressure of when an introvert gets caught up in a suffocating life of marriage, fatherhood and competing fame.
The foreshadowing of him saying to his audience in the first stand up scene that being engaged is like having a weight tied to your left testicle while trying to swim shows that someone is going to die in this relationship and as we know, he chooses her instead of himself. I truly wondered if any of them thought of Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood during this sequence.
I thought the ending was perfection. As an audience, we are moved greatly by the sight of an actual human girl, since the parents treated her like a meaningless doll her entire short life. I also thought it was profound that the daughter sings something to the effect of “neither of you truly cared, I was just a plaything” and that her choice now is to forgive or forget.
The other beautifully done dark humor scene is with Simon Helberg conducting when he reveals their affair but intermittently has to focus on conducting the orchestra–genius!
