Is Leos Carax’s new film Annette a secret homage… | Little White Lies

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Is Leos Carax’s new film Annette a secret homage to Jacques Tati?

04 Nov 2016

Words by David Jenkins

A man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, looking ahead.
A man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, looking ahead.
Rooney Mara, Adam Dri­ver and Rihan­na are on board, and pop duo Sparks are sup­ply­ing the music.

Before you read the fol­low­ing words, please do try to hold it togeth­er. There are mav­er­icks, there are super out-there wild mav­er­icks, and then, right at the very peak of mav­er­ick moun­tain, is the French direc­tor Leos Carax.

In 2012 he returned after a pro­longed hia­tus with his one-man Parisian meta-epic, Holy Motors, in which the spindly actor Denis Lavant trans­forms into a new char­ac­ter as each scene in the film pro­gress­es. Word from on high (Vari­ety) has announced that Carax is back, and this time he’s flanked by a coterie of Hol­ly­wood hard-hit­ters, includ­ing 2015’s real best actress, Rooney Mara, auteur gold­en boy Adam Dri­ver, and, eh, Rihanna.

The film, titled Anette, is billed as a Carax musi­cal with a score sup­plied by the eccen­tric pop sib­lings Sparks, and is the director’s first Eng­lish-lan­guage fea­ture. As with Holy Motors, it’s prob­a­bly best that we know as lit­tle about it in advance as pos­si­ble, as you absolute­ly wouldn’t want to spoil the fun that Carax no doubt has in store for us.

But it’s worth not­ing that, before his death, French mas­ter Jacques Tati was set­ting up a fea­ture satiris­ing tele­vi­sion enti­tled Con­fu­sion which, too, was due to fea­ture songs sup­plied by Sparks. You can’t help but won­der if this is Carax’s cheeky homage to one of the all-time greats?

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