Looking at the title an some of the images from the film that feature a creepy doll, it’s easy to assume that this is a horror movie of some kind. Yet things aren’t so straightforward as this is a musical using music entirely by the Sparks brothers and is directed by Leos Carax, whose last film Holy Motors I found almost completely incomprehensible. Some bizarreness aside, the main plot, once it gets going, is actually quite straightforward and emotionally affecting. The involvement of the Sparks brothers makes it unique and sometimes makes it feel more like performance art than a film.

Two stars of the stage, comedian Henry McHenry and opera singer Ann Desfranoux, begin a very public romance and have the masses enthralled. Very quickly they marry and have a daughter together named Annette. Unfortunately that proves to be the high point of their romance as Henry soon feels worn down by the relationship and his career starts to tank while Ann is more successful than ever. While on a yacht cruise, Henry’s drunken behavior in the middle of a storm puts their lives at risk. When Ann is swept overboard, he declines to save her, telling himself that he must prioritize Annette. Though the police investigate her death, he is cleared of suspicion. Ann’s ghost swears revenge and imbues Annette with her singing voice. Henry is therefore amazed to discover that baby Annette without being taught is able to sing beautifully whenever music is put on. With his career still dead, he devises a plan to have Annette perform on stage as a source of income.

The early part of the film meanders so much and is so bizarre that for a while I wondered if it even had any plotline at all. The main problem is that it takes so much time to establish the two main characters and then insists on showing Henry’s entire act called The Ape of God. Henry’s act is really awful even if it serves the purposes of the plot for it to be so. It’s not a stand-up comedy act so much as a performance art piece that invites the audience to see how absurd it is to have a person on stage try to get people to laugh. I feel that the film improves as it takes on a more conventional shape. The first sight of baby Annette being a creepy puppet is a shock and for a while it does make you wonder if this will indeed be a horror movie. But of course the true horror lies not in Annette at all but in Henry’s evil as witnessed by his daughter. The emotional arc of Henry’s transformation works reasonably well but it’s also very classical and traditional which the bizarre presentation only masks.

I do love the music and the style of the Sparks brothers. It’s impressive how every song in here is at least somewhat catchy and while there is some spoken dialogue, there’s very little of it. Almost everything is sung. Unfortunately while this counts as a fascinating spectacle, it is only mediocre as a film. It’s too long and suffers terribly from having pretty much no supporting characters. The accompanist is given no name and the film treats that as a kind of joke but I think it is actually a sign of a weak script. A good film should have more than one thing going on at a time but this one is just not that complicated. I believe that fans of brothers would love this and it’s great for them that they finally managed to get their dream movie project made. To most people however it’s missable.