Leos Carax’s Annette may not be a film for everyone, but if you’re willing to give yourself over to its aesthetic eccentricities and darker edges, you’re in for a moving musical experience unlike any other. Not quite a traditional song-and-dance extravaganza – and really an opera either, even though every word is sung – the film is closer to a narrative concept album brought to life on celluloid. As such, there are sometimes storytelling leaps that occur between songs (or even within verses) that can make the story frustrating if you aren’t expecting a big screen version of an art rock album (with music, lyrics, and screenplay by Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks) or if this kind of narrative just isn’t your cup of tea. but if you’re willing to take the leap, there’s much to love here – the music, the performances, and especially the dissection of toxic masculinity. The story itself weaves dark, fable-like qualities into its exploration of performer and performance, audience and expectation, and the sometimes slippery and toxic nature of the relationship between artists, fame, and the public. Beyond some of the uncanny and unreal design elements in the film that heighten its reality, the use of puppetry to bring the titular character to life evokes questions about the ways in which each of the three principle characters use this child for their own ends – in much the same way that adults often coerce and manipulate the children in their lives, forcing them to play a multitude of roles throughout childhood. And yet, as dark and despairing as the film can seem, it nevertheless leaves us ruminating on whether it is possible to forgive those who wronged us, to seek it from those we have wronged, and what the cost is for us when we hold onto our anger.