Anora. It’s a bit of a puzzle to sum up. Written and directed by Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Red Rocket), it took the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year and may be on the brink of being named Best Picture. But is it good? Depends on what you mean. And is it worth watching? Probably not.
While I have always hated Sean Baker’s character studies from American fringe culture, Anora at least has the look of a professional film. Baker’s other movies have been in a low-budget cinema vérité style. It is safe to say that this film is the director’s most polished and mature. But “mature” cuts both ways.
The content of Anora is very clearly “mature,” as that word is used (along with “adult”) to describe sexually gratuitous material. Let me be clear: from frame one, you will see naked female bodies doing all manner of things. For anyone aroused by the female body, I have to advise skipping this one. But I do that almost reluctantly, because halfway through, the film morphs out of pornographic fantasy (both the title character’s power dreams of sexual ownership and the manboy’s ideas of idle fun) into a comedic crime chase movie, before settling into a truly powerful ending about class servitude and the way in which sin shapes our view of the world. (I suspect this final scene is the real reason the film has been so acclaimed. It’s a killer way to end a messy story, and it sticks with you.)
Content-control software like VidAngel would cut out so much as to make the movie nearly unwatchable. If there is an answer, it is to start the film about an hour in and deal with the nudity that still comes near the end. Because the second and third acts of Anora explore some important and complex issues. I can sum up the first act for you: it’s Pretty Woman but with reality goggles. Escort Ani falls for rich young repeat customer Ivan and agrees to marry him.
Once that garbage is out of the way, and you’ve made it past the hour of endless sex scenes, the plot takes off. Act two finds Ivan’s insanely wealthy (and no doubt insanely corrupt) Russian parents hearing of the union and sending their goons to babysit their son until their private jet can land in NYC. Ivan flees, abandoning Ani, and the bumbling goons have to deal first with a feral Ani and then a missing Ivan. As Ani reluctantly helps the Armenian heavies look for her husband, it becomes clear that they are all in the same situation: pledged to (owned by) the powerful and unthinking, debasing themselves and others in an attempt to survive this rich man’s world. There are themes of self-delusion, perpetually infantile youth culture, the ways we use people and are used, the cyclical trap of American poverty, assumptions about the other sex, etc.
And all of that’s interesting—and even funny. But how can it possibly balance that first fleshy hour?