Go ahead, name one thing you would expect to never happen in contemporary cinema. That’s right, there’s a musical film starring Adam Driver and Marion Cottilard (okay, that last part is believable), that happens to have been written by Ron and Russell Mael, the brothers who for purposes of business go by the name Sparks. Seriously, who would have guessed?
But the trailer for Annette has just been released, and it promises to be verging on the fantastical – which is good timing, since reality has done nothing but beat us down for the better part of sixteen months. In it, Driver plays Henry, a quite talented stand-up comedian, who falls hard for Ann, an internationally venerated opera singer. We hear Henry’s revealing narration: “Ann has changed me. What I see in her is obvious. What she sees in me…hmm, that’s a little more puzzling.”
The character of the title is the baby born to the couple, who is apparently destined for something other than just another quotidian human lifetime. The specifics are best left to mystery right now – but their lives will be forever changed by that destiny.
Sparks, the legendary and impossibly influential LA duo (whose long-awaited documentary The Sparks Brothers arrived in theaters last week), have also written new songs for the film, under the direction of producer Marius de Vries (La La Land, Bohemian Rhapsody, Moulin Rouge). Annette is notably helmed by French director Leos Carax – whose 2012 Holy Motors is a modern fantasy classic – and arrives in select US theaters August 6, before premiering on Amazon Prime Video two weeks later.