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Mhatt is back, and now he’s off and running! Oscar Watcher is his series of short articles covering the current awards bait as we head into the season. Last time around he tackled A Real Pain, and this time it is Anora.
Anora
Writer/Director Sean Baker directs a cast of veritable no-names through three chaotic weeks of a sex and drug-fueled Cinderella story with a twist. It follows the relationship between a stripper and a wealthy client.
Ani/Anora (Mikey Maddison) is a stripper at a high-class club called Headquarters. She is requested by a wealthy Russian kid, and I do mean a kid, although his character is twenty-one, he looks pubescent, named Ivan/Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn).
She knows Russian, she dances, they bond, and he hires her for some exclusive attention after a New Year’s Eve party, kicking off a run of sex, drugs, parties, general ballin’ at his swank pad, various New York hotspots, and life is a dream until his parents find out. As the ultra-wealthy do, his parents have a team of Albanian goons to keep an eye on their perpetual disappointment and get involved over an alleged ‘green card’ marriage.
The question is quickly answered, which is greater: Vanya’s love for Ani or the fear of his parents and being the sort of horny, drug-abusing, spoiled, gamer, douche who behaves predictably and so begins a frenetic game of hide-and-seek.
So here is where the movie takes a bit of a turn. For better or worse, it becomes something of a caper as the Goons bumble and Ani berates them across the city, desperate to reunite with her beau before her parents arrive from Russia.
As they came together, they must come apart, which helps her to better understand how exactly she fits into his life and perhaps the world at large.
Overall, I struggled with how to review Anora as I think enjoyment or appreciation will split audiences along age or maybe experiential lines, so I will try to look at it from both sides. The insightful me saw Ani as a fighter, duly protective of her new life and quite justified in her fearless rampage as a means to preserve it.
She could even be a modern folk hero to anyone who’s ever been promised the moon in exchange for their bodies. Another casualty of the rampant commodification of humanity as just another party supply to the wealthy hedonists, with their hopes and hearts getting crushed as collateral damage. The less insightful me struggled to see past its superficiality and relentlessly kinetic visuals which are pretty rampant.
The boobies and the champagne parties don’t appeal to me as entertainment on their own, and I think that story-wise this is a major impediment. Acting-wise, there were glimmers of talent, but even those were overshadowed by the perpetual petulance of pretty much every character. Any nuance or moments of reflection were saved until the end, also confused by a baffling move by Igor the tender Goon (Yura Borisov), but just because they shifted and shared some emotions for a scene it doesn’t equal a payoff.
Despite being a seasoned stripper, Ani displayed an unbelievable level of naïveté which made her retaining the symbolical Glass Slipper as a souvenir all but negate her already flimsy emotional arc.
What You Should or Shouldn’t Watch For?
Sean Baker for Best Director. Sean Baker for Best Original Screenplay.
Mikey Madison for Best Actress. Yura Borisov for Best Supporting Actor.
Best Picture.
Best Editing.
Only recommended viewing for anyone under twenty-five, Disney adults with an edgy side, people who can’t tell a bad Brooklyn accent from a bad New Jersey accent, and anyone who thought Sean Baker’s past films needed more gratuitous sex and drugs.
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