All your Questions About Adam Driver Singing While Performing Cunnilingus, Answered

Does he sing directly into Marion Cotillard’s vagina in Annette, or nah? Photo: UGC

This very important article originally ran during Cannes 2021.

The 74th Cannes Film Festival kicked off with a screening of Leos Carax’s Annette, a movie musical about whether or not it is ethical to ask a fake baby to perform at the Super Bowl. Thousands showed up in their best black-tie at the Lumiere and fully ignored the COVID-era festival’s mask mandate to take in the two-plus-hour film, which stars Adam Driver as Henry McHenry, a sort of Pete Davidson meets Bo Burnham meets Raging Bull comic on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and Marion Cotillard as Ann, a beautiful opera singer whose signature move is dying horribly onstage. The unlikely pair meet, fall in love, purchase a woodsy simulacra of Dakota Johnson’s L.A. home, as featured in Architectural Digest, and conceive a baby named Annette, who has a supernatural singing talent and is played by a puppet with the uncanny skin texture of a fraying burlap sack.

But as the laws of nature dictate, in order to conceive the burlap baby, Henry and Ann must have burlap sex. A lot of it. Prior to the Annette’s premiere, the film’s sex scenes were the most buzzed-about moment, with Twitter losing its collective mind over a brief quote from Marion Cotillard about how Adam Driver would be the first person in history to sing on screen while performing cunnilingus. I can’t stress this enough: This scene, delightfully strange as it may be, is absolutely the least bizarre part of Annette. This is a movie wherein Adam Driver, clad in a hooded bathrobe and shorts, simulates tickling an invisible Marion Cotillard to her untimely death onstage, and wherein a puppet baby with inexplicably massive ears becomes an international superstar on the strength of her falsetto. However, in the hours since the film’s premiere, no one can seem to agree on whether or not Adam Driver does, in fact, sing directly into the void (Marion Cotillard’s vagina) or whether he pauses in the act to lift his head and deliver a solo into the air surrounding Marion Cotillard’s vagina.

Seeing as this is an important distinction with international implications, I understand the need for the discourse surrounding it. So I am here to set the record straight. In the scene in question, Henry and Ann have just spent the day mooning around the countryside, motorcycling down empty roads and wandering through the woods, singing a song entitled, “We Love Each Other So Much� (the preferred form of foreplay for fans of Folklore). As the sun sets, they arrive back at Dakota Johnson’s home, where they fall nakedly into each other’s arms, still singing (mostly, the lyrics are as follows: “We love each other so much.�) Quickly, the camera pulls back to reveal Henry absolutely going to town on Ann, who is sweating and moaning while continuing to proclaim her intense love for Henry. “Speak softly when you say it,� she adds, perhaps hinting that she does not want him to say it (that he loves her so much) directly into her vagina. At the crucial moment in question, Henry does, indeed, pop his head up, taking a brief break from his important work, to proclaim his undying lust. “Speak softly when you say it,� he agrees, adding, “We love each other so much,� before diving back down into the French depths.

So there you have it: Adam Driver does not sing directly into the depths of Marion Cotillard, but rather, pauses briefly in the act in order to repeat a line that she has just sung to him, because what is sex if there is no communication, and how can one communicate when one’s voice is muffled by one’s partner’s vagina?

It’s important to note that, later on in the film, Henry does go down on Ann yet again, this time right before she goes into labor to deliver her Rankin and Bass offspring. This time, only Ann sings, while Henry rightly focuses on the task at hand (or at tongue) (sorry I’m very jet lagged). Why is there so much cunningulus in this movie, which, again, is primarily about the tragic exploitation of a puppet and the sensual danger involved in tickling? The medical community tells me that this is the best way to ensure that you give birth to a puppet, rather than a human baby.