Movie Review – Anora
Principal Cast : Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Aleksei Serebryakov, Darya Ekamasova, Lindsey Normington, Vincent Radwinsky, Anton Bitter, Ivy Wolk.
Synopsis: A young escort from Brooklyn meets and impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairy tale is threatened as his parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.
********
I came into Anora knowing almost nothing about it, other than it had been proclaimed one of the best films of 2024 and boasted a standout performance from up-and-coming actress Mikey Madison, best known at this point for her turn in Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Sadly, only one of those things is true about Anora, for me at least; Mikey Madison gives a brave, thunderous turn as Brooklyn resident stripper/callgirl Anora Mikheeva, but for me The Florida Project director Sean Baker isn’t a filmmaker I find accessible on an emotional, thematic level, and consequently Anora failed to ignite my interest. Yes, Anora is competently made and I’m sure has something to say about love, life and sex to some people out there, but I found this movie entirely aggravating and frustrating to the point of anger.
The film sees smartmouthed stripper Anora meet, and eventually marry (for entirely ethical reasons) young Russian oligarch heir Ivan Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), before his parents (Aleksei Serebryakov and Darya Ekamasova) find out and show up in country to put an end to their wedlock. Throughout their passionate capture they are beset by Toros (Karren Karagulian), an Armenian handler, and Igor (Yura Borisov), a henchman who forms a bond with Anora.
Anora has a lot in common with Baker’s critically acclaimed The Florida Project, from its “ripped from reality” indie-style carelessness to its uneven drama-comedy tone (something I failed to appreciate) and the sense that this was more documentary than fictional story, and similarly to the director’s previous work I just couldn’t find any enjoyment within it. All the characters are pretty reprehensible, even Madison’s sexy yet filthy Anora (or Annie, as she’s referred to a lot in this), and without a compelling character for me to empathise or associate with, the plight of everyone on the screen mattered very little. I think this is less to do with Baker’s filmmaking sensibilities and more my underappreciation for this style of movie, which wavers between beatific treatise on the seedy world of stripping and the vagaries of falling for a client – it’s Pretty Woman for a cynical Instagram age, and not for the better.
If you’d asked me thirty years ago to go see a film with so much boobs and bums I’d have leapt at the chance, and fair enough I might have enjoyed Anora at a puerile level if for nothing else than there’s lots of flesh flashed through the film’s opening act. What it isn’t, however, is sexy or pornographic, but rather unflattering for all involved thanks to flat choreography, and a realism preventing the “fantasy” of on-screen sex from promulgating. It’s a world-building mantra by Baker and his screenplay that develops the unemotional abstractedness of adult entertainment and selling one’s body for sex with the real world collision of “love”, or at least some resemblance of it. Anora and Ivan’s relationship is one of physical intimacy without emotional connection, at least on Ivan’s part mainly because he simply wants to escape his domineering (and terrifying) parents, and by marrying an American girl he “gets his greencard”. I’m pretty sure Gerard Depardieu made a film about it a while ago. Ce la vie.
No, Anora is a bizarrely antiseptic cinema experience, filled with people who despise their own lives, and often despise each other. Even while she’s screwing him, Anora smiles at Ivan’s relative lack of sexual prowess, before suddenly agreeing to marry him in a fit of… I don’t know, post-orgasmic bliss? Something. I couldn’t connect with Anora as a character, in that she’s the very antithesis of Julia Roberts’ Pretty Woman archetype in that she’s a wiseass, strongly motivated and definitely in charge of her own destiny, while also being a completely unlikeable person. Mikey Madison should be commended for her absolute commitment to the role, a thankless task given she spends a lot of it near-nude and in various degrading poses, which might make sense if her story was stronger or her arc a little less prosaic and icky. Yes, icky – no shade on sex workers, but Sean Baker’s take on the industry and the emotional pitfalls of it did not work for me here.
Honestly, I’m pissed off that I didn’t enjoy this film, mainly because of the general sentiment about it everywhere else indicates I should find something in Anora to appreciate. I guess the various performances individually had moments of hilarity (the actor playing Toros, Karren Karagulian, has a superb sense of comic timing) and dramatic weight, but for me it didn’t coalesce into anything coherently entertaining. I wanted to find joy in this, to find some human truth (other than the usual tenet of human beings being absolute trash to each other) or existential profundity. Nope, instead it was a lot of cool wide-angle lens photography, sex I felt like I needed a shower after watching griminess, and a load of screaming and crying for no sane reason. I clocked out fairly early on watching this one, and I suspect a lot of general audiences will too. The nudity isn’t pleasurable, the characters utterly rancid most of the time, and the lack of situational awareness absolutely baffling given the shocking amount of information people like Anora would have access to online.
Anora is a film that’s well made but wasn’t for me. I’m pleased it’s getting so much love, and there’s aspects to it that I’m sure are worthy of praise, but as an overall achievement I found it uncompelling and frustratingly esoteric to the point of yelling at the screen. And for a film touted as a “drama/comedy” there wasn’t much to laugh at. Treat my recommendation as one of overall disappointment drawn largely from Sean Baker’s style and insistent florid touches, rather than anything more innate regarding the production. I just didn’t like it.
Who wrote this?
