If you know anything about Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks, you know they’re only interested in pleasing themselves when it comes to their art. (If you don’t know anything about Sparks, you can learn quite a lot, like I did, from the new Edgar Wright documentary about the band, called The Sparks Brothers.) If you know who Leos Carax is, it’s likely you’ve seen his 2012 film Holy Motors, so you know how visually inventive and wacked-out his singular aesthetic is.
This trio of artists have come together to create a sui generis piece of cinema in Annette. A sort of rock opera by way of the French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – Carax also hails from France – Annette is by turns uplifting, depressing, silly, and hopelessly bleak. That wild mixture makes for a heady experience in certain moments, but it also never quite gels into a cohesive whole. Add to that a lead performance from Adam Driver that is, while bold and an example of an actor challenging himself, emotionally distant, which made it hard for me to connect with.
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I’m doing something a little different with this review. My wife, Rae, felt so strongly about Promising Young Woman when we finished watching it together that she felt compelled to write about it. I thought it would be cool to get a male and female perspective, for this movie especially. Whenever I write about a movie that focuses on a historically oppressed class of people, I try to seek out someone in that particular group to give me feedback before I publish, to make sure my white, straight, cis, male point-of-view isn’t causing me to write insensitive or unintentionally ignorant things. For this review, I’m including the entire perspective in the form of Rae’s review. I hope you enjoy the experiment. Please let us know what you think in the comments section!
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The Park family aren’t bad people, per se. They’re just completely oblivious to anything and anyone that doesn’t involve them directly. Their obscene wealth allows them that luxury. So, late in Parasite – director Bong Joon-ho’s savage satire on class – when a heavy rain storm causes catastrophic flooding in poor neighborhoods, Mrs. Park, Yeon-kyo, can only perceive how it has affected her. The heavy rains have washed away the grime of the city, she says. In fact, it’s really a blessing. And besides, the next day has brought sunshine and a beautiful afternoon, perfect for celebrating her son Da-song’s birthday. She says this to one of her servants, a member of the Kim family, whose semi-basement apartment was devastated by the flood.
That moment offers a stinging observation, one among many, of how the rich move effortlessly through the world, while the less fortunate struggle to survive. Just like Snowpiercer, Bong’s 2013 dystopian take on class struggle, Parasite is as socially conscious as it is wildly entertaining. His use of virtuoso camera technique, dense structure, surprising plot twists, and pitch-black humor coalesce into an unforgettable piece of cinema.
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