The music of brothers Ron and Russell Mael, better known as the band Sparks, has always invited the descriptor “cinematic.” Maybe it’s their elaborate arrangements or Ron’s literate, self-aware lyrics. Or maybe it’s their album covers, which always hinted at little stories, like Propaganda, where they were bound and gagged in the back of a speedboat, apparently being taken by unseen kidnappers to be dumped in international waters. Why? Who knows. That’s Sparks for you.
As detailed in Edgar Wright’s excellent documentary The Sparks Brothers, the Maels, who started in the late 1960s, had their first hit in the glam rock era, and practically invented synth-pop, took to music videos like fish to water. At the end of the MTV ’80s, they tried to expand into film with hot new director Tim Burton, pitching a musical version of the manga Mai, the Psychic Girl. It sounded impossibly weird back then, especially once Burton became the biggest filmmaker in the world with Batman, and it never came to fruition. But looking back from 2021, where Japanese manga and anime artists have conquered the globe, the idea seems way ahead of its time. Again, that’s Sparks for you.
With Wright’s doc premiering at Sundance and getting wide release, it seems finally, 50 years into their career, Sparks’ time has come. (Of course, the film had the misfortune of premiering the same year as Oscar-shoo-in Summer of Soul, which is perfectly on-brand for the band’s snakebite career.) Now the brothers have finally gotten to fulfill their big screen musical ambitions with Annette, a long-brewing collaboration with French director Leos Carax. It’s beautiful, elaborate, obtuse, uncompromising, and either ahead of its time or outside of the concept of time. In other words, it’s very Sparks.
Annette stars Adam Driver as Henry McHenry, a comedian in the perpetually aggrieved style of Lenny Bruce, who falls deeply in love with opera singer Ann Defrasnoux, played by Marion Cotillard. After a whirlwind (and extremely horny) courtship and marriage, the couple gives birth to Annette, a beautiful baby girl played for most of the movie by a puppet. But there’s trouble in paradise. Ann’s ex is her accompanist (Simon Helberg), and his continued presence brings out Henry’s jealous side. Meanwhile, Henry’s new show “The Ape of God” — which is little more than Henry lashing out at the audience — is bombing, while Ann’s career is taking off. Things come to a head when a drunken Henry sails the couple’s yacht into a storm. Then the really weird stuff starts.
About halfway through Annette, I turned to my wife and said, “Adam Driver is our Brando.” The guy is good at everything from stealing the show as Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy to embodying the gawky, quiet poet in Paterson. Annette proves he’s game for anything. It’s like Brando singing in Guys and Dolls, only instead of appearing in a popular Broadway musical, it’s a deeply weird, experimental glam rock opera. Who else would risk their career for this? Who else could pull it off so well?
Speaking of pulling it off, a few minutes later I said to my wife, “Wow, he sure is shirtless a lot.” Carax knows he’s got two of the most beautiful people on the planet, and he’s not afraid to shoot them in all their glory, with sex scenes that look like Caravaggio paintings. Did I mention they’re singing during the sex scenes?
Carax isn’t afraid of anything. The visuals are just as striking and experimental as the music. He puts his stars on the back of a real motorcycle, singing into the wind with no helmets. The emotions are big and brash, flirting with the outlandish, until it comes to a boil in an absolute barn burner of a final scene.
Annette is going to be called “too weird” by a lot of people whose favorite films involve space wizards and flying men in tights, but for me, it was the perfect amount of weird. In an industry that promises magic but delivers conformity, it’s a fresh breath of originality. That’s Sparks for you.