Anora

 

Sean Baker: Anora (US 2024) with Mark Eydelshteyn (Vanya) and Mikey Madison (Ani).

OPENING GALA

37th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF) Rakkautta & Anarkiaa / Love & Anarchy

Opened by Outi Rehn and Pekka Lanerva.

US © 2024 Anora Productions.

Languages: English, Russian, Armenian. English subtitles.

Festival premiere: 21 May 2024 Cannes - Palme d'Or.

American festival premiere: 30 Aug 2024 Telluride.

Finnish premiere: 1 Nov 2024, released by Finnkinon elokuvalevitys with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Taina Komu / Sophia Beckman.

Viewed at HIFF, Bio Rex, 19 Sep 2024

Program note at Telluride Film Festival 2024: Made possible by a donation from Linda Lichter & Nick Marck --- Larry Gross (TFF 2024): "Sean Baker's film begins as a sexually explicit PRETTY WOMAN. Ani (Mikey Madison), a lap-dancer, is not above providing extra services if the price is right. Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the spoiled, comically libidinous son of a Russian oligarch, can't get enough of her. Their impromptu marriage sends their relationship into wildly unpredictable territory. Though Madison (best known for the series Better Things) has been a working actress for a decade, nothing will prepare you for her pedal-to-the metal comic intensity and the raw street cred she brings to every scene. Baker (RED ROCKET) continues to display his mastery in depicting people leading unconventional lives on the margins of society. With ANORA, he adds outrageous slapstick comedy and a pulse-pounding crime story to his repertoire. Winner of Cannes Palme d Or, ANORA firmly positions Baker as a significant modern auteur."  LG (U.S., 2024, 138 min) In person: Sean Baker, Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Samantha Quan, Karren Karagulian, Alex Coco.

AA: I missed Anora in Telluride because my antennae alerted that I might not care for it. But I wanted to see Anora at the opening gala of Love & Anarchy the Helsinki International Festival, because it fits the "Anarchy" bill. 

There are special thanks in the end credits to Jess Franco and Soledad Miranda. Soledad Miranda was a Spanish flamenco dancer and singer who got her big breakthrough in Jess Franco movies like Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht (with Christopher Lee) and Vampyros lesbos (as a Turkish lesbian vampire who chases new victims with her erotic nightclub act).

Anora belongs to the current of prestige movies channeling the genre energy of low budget pulp fiction. This has been a major trend since the 1970s and Star Wars. My own attitude is ambivalent to the upgrading of Buck Rogers and Jess Franco without a corresponding broadening of the spiritual perspective.

Anora has been seen as a satirical corrective to Pretty Woman. Disney World is planned as the site of the honeymoon of Ani and Vanya, and Cinderella is the explicit reference both in Pretty Woman and Anora. Anora turns into a parody, a farce and a slapstick comedy, but at the same time it is a tragic coming-of-age story for the protagonist.

Visually, Anora is powerful, juxtaposing strikingly its different worlds. The gaudy milieu of the Headquarters (HQ) sex wonderland, bathing in glowing red. The equally gaudy but expensive nouveau-riche world of the Zakharov family with luxury cars, private jets, Las Vegas suites and a New York penthouse - a lifestyle resembling that of a James Bond villain. And the counter-image: solid, gritty New York milieux on the other side of the tracks. All this has been caught memorably by the cinematographer Drew Daniels.

The performances are first-rate by Mikey Madison as Ani, Mark Eidelshtein as Ivan (Vanya) and Yura Borisov (Igor).

Anora is an original interpretation of the eternal theme of sex as commodity. It is about reification and objectification. Starting with the opening credits there is abundant footage of big bare bottoms, and many sex scenes. Some have warm emotion, but the general impression is loveless love, sexless sex. Another eternal theme: sex without love can be good but a fundamental void remains.

Because of the spiritual emptiness I cannot relate to Anora. Unfortunately the movie remains on a surface level.

The life of Russian oligarchs would be a magnificent subject for the cinema. Putin's oligarchs manage the biggest treasury of dark money in the history of the world, and it is growing in the archipelago of Western tax paradises in the City of London, Delaware, New York, etc. While we nominally subject Russia to sanctions because of its Feldzug against Ukraine, we in reality increasingly finance Russia helping it expand its treasury of dark money. This theme is absent from Anora. The oligarch family is portrayed in caricature, especially Ms. Zakharov and her idiot son Vanya. But Father Zakharov is performed straight by the great Aleksei Serebryakov, and I would have liked even fleeting references to his business dimension. I am not impressed by the caricature. We have underestimated Russia since the Fall of the Wall (and all the way since the Intervention Wars of 1918-1922) and are currently suffering the consequences.

The Zakharovs have managed to raise an heir with no character or integrity. Igor the bodyguard is right when he congratulates Anora for having become liberated from the family.

There has been a turn in the accounts of sex workers in the cinema. Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls was derided at the time, but now there are interesting movies on the milieu, often directed by women such as Hustlers by Lorene Scafaria and À mon seul désir by Lucie Borleteau. The female look provides a new perspective. About Anora I have to make up my mind: is it mainly a case of glorified exploitation? 

While Mikey Madison's performance is great, her character has not much scope - and the world of the movie is desolately empty in spiritual dimension and transcendence. The extremely limited range of the vocabulary in the dialogue may be due to Anora's Uzbek-Russian background. Expletives dominate to such an extent that the audience was roaring in laughter to its slapstick stupidity. I wanted to cry.