Annie Fratellini and Pierre Etaix

Last month I took the train from Brussels to Paris to talk to Valerie Fratellini at the Academy Fratellini.  During my research project on Fratellini family I stumble on a lot of interesting issues... In this family where the clown virus was passed on from generation to generation where some had 'it' and some didn't. The belief that you're 'born a clown'... Valerie who was somehow pushed to be a clown but does not feel she is one. There's Annie who went away from the circus but got back to it because of Pierre Etaix to finally become the clown Annie had always been. There's 'mother and daughter' playing together in reversed roles and the fact that Annie thinks of clown to be gender neutral.

One of the most important questions I wanted to ask Valerie was: 'why did Pierre stop playing with Annie?' Valerie, who took on Pierres role, was very motivated to answer my question. Pierre, who was not her physical father, but a father in the sense that he had given her the love for the circus, had run away angry from the circus after Valerie had fallen from the trapeze. Annie had not been able to play that day because of that event and Pierre had called out in anger: "Choose. It's your daughter or me. " After that they stopped playing with each other even though their relationship was not over, but turbulent as far as Valerie got something from it.

Valeries' answer to my question was that both had a huge ego what did not go well together. They both wanted to have the final word on things and that clashed.

She told me how much Annie hated the circus and run away from it in order to have a successful career as a jazz musician and actress. After two divorces, Annie had decided to stay alone and then met Pierre who had wanted to become a clown as a child and was crazy about the circus. He wanted to make the film 'Le grand amour' and was looking for the right person to play the role of his wife in the movie, saw Annie sing and soon after they married in that movie and in real life. He said Annie was born to be a clown.

And Annie, who believed that, learned, through the eyes of Pierre, to see the Frallini family history from a new perspective. The song Annie sings is about circus life and in Annie's opinion actually much too romantisized. The reality of growing up in a circus was not freedom but freezing cold and never ending work. Still, Annie returned to that circus life and renewed it by setting up a school. The same school that I visited in November.