I went to see the new movie Anora, largely because it had been so widely acclaimed. Sean Baker won the Palme d’Or, awarded to the director of the Best Feature Film at the Cannes Film Festival; he also wrote the story. The film was nominated for several other awards. I saw it at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, one of only two people present on an early Wednesday matinee.
Fandango describes it as “an audacious, thrilling, and comedic variation on a modern-day Cinderella story.” Ani (Mikey Madison) is a young sex worker from Brooklyn who is good at her job. One of her clients is a young, brash, fairly obnoxious, but very rich young man of Russian heritage named Ivan or Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), who specifically asked for an escort who at least understood Russian. Anora’s grandmother had never learned how to speak English.
They are having a good time, in a wretched excess way, with him shelling out beaucoup bucks for her exclusive company, and in short order, they decide to get married. This is a problem for Vanya’s handlers when they find out. They worked for his parents and were supposed to keep him on a loose leash. Now, the marriage must annulled, which is complicated.
Evolution
The early part of the film was a bit boring to me. There’s a lot of sex, not just with Ani, and it’s very unsexy.
The film finally starts getting interesting when two of Vanya’s handlers rush to the lavish home where he and Ani are staying. These guys are intimidating but not lethally scary. Still, they and their immediate boss are determined to get their way and have the means to grease the legal machinery. At this point, I see Ani’s strength and vulnerability come through. And the film becomes a black comedy.
So I liked the latter half of it, although, as some critics pointed out, “Anora’s outbursts of fury, incessant trash talking, and relentless screaming can wear on the ear.” The Rotten Tomatoes reviews were 96% positive with the critics and 90% with the fans.
I’m reminded that when the movie Pretty Woman was being made, it started as a “gritty dark comedy about the dehumanizing nature of sex work,” much darker than the frothy tale that Garry Marshall engineered with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere’s characters. This is NOT Pretty Woman.