In “Annette,” Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard play parents to a puppet baby.
And that’s one of the least weird things about this deeply bizarre and uproarious movie musical (now in theaters and streaming on Amazon Prime). The film is the brainchild of French director Leos Carax and pop-rock duo Sparks, who initially envisioned this project as a concept album they could perform on tour. But after Carax used one of their songs in his 2012 movie “Holy Motors,” the three hashed out a way to bring it to the screen.
“I’ve always wanted to do a musical, although I thought I could never make one because I’m not a composer,” Carax says. But with “Annette,” he saw an opportunity to wed the “joy” of Sparks with the “grotesque and romantic and gothic” feel of 1974 rock opera “Phantom of the Paradise.”
“Annette” traces the tempestuous relationship between standup comedian Henry (Driver) and opera singer Ann (Cotillard), and the ways they exploit their young daughter, Annette. Like 1964’s “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” the film is almost entirely sung-through, with heightened emotions and jarring plot twists that are delivered completely sincerely. And in classic Sparks fashion, major themes are driven home through highly repetitive lyrics.
Characters “can sing about really banal things and it doesn’t always have to be that you’re breaking into song to express some very big, important moment,” says Ron Mael, one half of Sparks with brother Russell. “It can all be continuous.”
Here’s what else you should know going into “Annette,” which won best director at Cannes Film Festival last month and holds 70% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Annette wasn’t always going to be a puppet
Initially, Carax considered computer-generated imagery or an animatronic robot to play Annette, who ages from birth to 5 years old over the course of the movie.
“But I wanted the actors to be able to touch her and for her to be lovable, even for me,” Carax says. He finally found a French puppeteer, who modeled Annette after a young Ukrainian girl named Masha that Carax met a few years ago. Some journalists have declared the puppet “creepy,” while others say she’s “cute.”
“There’s something disturbing that should be there,” Carax says. “I suppose there was a concern of crossing over into the uncanny valley: a robot with a human face, and how creepy that is. So that’s why we made it very obvious she’s a puppet, but I can’t help if people don’t get attached to her.”
Marion Cotillard had to sing during a sex scene, torrential ‘storm’
One of the most talked-about sequences out of Cannes was the duet “We Love Each Other So Much,” in which Henry serenades Ann while they’re naked in bed having sex.
“The moments of them going through multiple sexual acts while singing this song, that was Leos’ (idea),” Ron says.
It presented a unique challenge for Cotillard and Driver, who recorded all of their vocals live on set.
“Singing while lying down was really the worst, but that’s what Leos wanted,” Cotillard says. “We sang live because Leos wanted to have those accidents where you cannot breathe because you’re smoking or lying down or swimming on your back while you’re singing.”
Similarly difficult was a scene in which a drunken Henry and concerned Ann fight during a violent storm, singing and waltzing on the deck of a boat as they argue. The sequence was shot on a soundstage, but all that water splashing onto the actors was real.
“We had to cut some takes because water would come into my mouth and I couldn’t sing anymore,” Cotillard says. “The boat was moving so much and Adam is just this massive man, so that scene was really incredible to shoot.”
It breaks the fourth wall
“Annette” opens with exhilarating earworm “So May We Start,” the first song written for the film, as Driver, Cotillard and Simon Helberg (who plays their scene-stealing “conductor friend”) walk arm in arm down the streets of Los Angeles.
“We wanted to do a film musical with moments that broke the fourth wall,” Ron says. “So at the beginning of the movie, the writers and (actors) and director all appear as themselves, even though it’s still very theatrical.”
Although the film is set in Los Angeles, most of it was shot in Europe. But they flew to California toward the end of production to do “So May We Start,” which is mostly sung in one uninterrupted shot.
“We had rehearsed this so much, so to finally see it come to life for the camera was very special,” Cotillard says.
Rihanna had an inspired cameo that got scrapped
Carax recently revealed that he had written a small part for Rihanna, whose name was briefly attached to the project back in 2017 before her representatives said it wasn’t happening. The planned cameo was (sadly) never filmed with another artist.
“There was going to be a TV show where Baby Annette is doing a duet with some big singer, hopefully Rihanna,” Ron says. “It was a song called ‘I’ve Never Been Upstaged by Nobody.’ She was singing that, but in this case, Baby Annette was actually upstaging Rihanna.”
It’s polarizing, but that’s OK
With “Annette” hitting Amazon Prime, it’s sure to continue dividing audiences. The movie inspired walkouts at two separate screenings this reporter attended, where many moviegoers seemed unsure of how to react. A small group of people laughed and sang along, suggesting that “Annette” could become a future cult classic.
Bringing the film to Cannes, “I was not stressed because I know the film is amazing,” Cotillard says. “If people don’t like it, I actually don’t really care.”
“It’s really interesting to see that polarization, but in our minds, that’s the reaction we’d prefer to have, other than people just saying, ‘Oh, it’s a really pleasant film,’ ” Russell adds. “For us, it’s exactly the film we wanted to make.”
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