If you are looking for a review of Anora, there are plenty online. This isn’t a review; it will contain spoilers, so please don’t read this if you plan to watch the film. Just to say, I think it deserved its Oscar wins; the performances are immaculate.
So, I found the film hard to watch for many reasons. Before I talk about them, I think it might be useful to point out that it doesn’t make it a bad film. Making me think and challenging my comfort zone is healthy, the complete opposite of something like Facebook, and much of reality TV. This film had substance, which is a rare find in many successful films/TV.
So I was expecting a dark comedy-drama, and, try as much as I did, I found no comedy, bar the normal stuff that happens when a group of young friends get together. The main character, Anora, works in the sex industry as a stripper/lap dancer/stripper, which puts her under the very broad umbrella of sex work. She’s a beautiful young woman with seemingly little baggage, very confident, and very strong and in control of her environment, which is the strip club, but we don’t really get to know much more about her, apart from a brief glimpse of her home life. I thought this was a shame as the actress, Mikey Madison, is obviously highly skilled, her performance is faultless, and fleshing out her character would have made her far more 3 dimensional.
When she meets a young guy called Vanya, who goes to a private room with her and pays her to dance. She soon breaks a rule of the club and grinds on him because she likes him. He asks to meet her outside the club, which she agrees to, and arrives at his home the next day, which is a mansion; and it seems as though he’s loaded… He pays her for sex. Ok, so this is where I start to have some issues. The idea that strippers are escorts isn’t as common as some might think, and Anora doesn’t think of herself as an escort, but she does negotiate a price. So at this point, I’m seeing a young woman, vulnerable, in a house she’s never been to before, with a man she barely knows, and I’m concerned, I’m actually on edge. This isn’t uncommon for sex workers; it’s a risk of the job, meeting in unfamiliar places with strangers. It doesn’t make it any easier to watch, knowing the reality of this kind of work. It can be a cause for anxiety, of course, but not in the movie, she’s ok, and he’s just a spoiled idiot, who has a lot of friends who hang out with him obviously because he has cash, so I didn’t find anything comedic here, just young people doing party stuff.
So far, I haven’t found the dark comedy, just a keyhole romantic view into the life of a stripper who then agrees to be his escort for the week for 15k. This is where the parallel to Pretty Woman is, but that’s not really fair to either movie; the comparison is as tenuous as it would be to say all sex workers are the same. The biggest difference is the maturity of the main couple around whom the stories are based. I actually think, shockingly, Pretty Woman looks more at the social stigma and risks of sex workers than Anora, not a criticism, just an observation.
So the week of the party ends in Vegas, and she says she’s going to miss being with him, at which point he asks her to marry him, which she eventually agrees to. I’m thinking I’m probably too old to see the fun in making this kind of mistake; it was obviously coming as soon as the writing took them to Vegas.
So, cutting out some of the film where he refuses to talk to his family when they call, as they hear about him getting married, and they have sex while he plays video games, with only a hint of the kind of intimacy she would like to see happening between them.
Eventually, representatives of his family turn up, and this is where the film became very challenging for me. Probably being a dad of 2 daughters doesn’t help here, and this is from my point of view, so please take it as such. 2 Guys turn up at the house representing his family, they force themselves in, refuse to leave, and Vanya decides to run away. When Anora is too slow to leave with him, as she wants to get dressed, he abandons her, leaving her with 2 strangers, who refuse to let her leave, leading to one of them tying her up to ‘keep her safe’. Later, another family rep joins them, finding her tied up, and also refuses to let her leave, uses her phone, gags her and eventually takes her with them, 3 grown men, off on a chase to find Vanya. So is this a dark comedy? Assault, kidnapping, etc. Yes, we saw all this in films like The Hangover, but those were obvious farces, slapstick and out-of-control comedic exaggerations. For me, it was too dramatic to be comedic, again, not an issue, but I’m trying to find out why this is called a ‘Romantic Comedy Drama’ and so far I only see the Drama with a tiny touch of romance, if you can call entitlement romance.
So on the journey to find Vanya, there is damage to property, in a very threatening way, thuggish actions… I’m not listing it all, just nothing funny, all tragic or aggressive behaviour. Finally, Vanya is found, his parents arrive, and the shit show continues. Nothing cute or funny about the way Anora is treated, and discarded, or the image of an entitled rich family who can do no wrong, and are completely dysfunctional, which is probably quite accurate.
The final setting we find Anora in a car with the man who tied her up, and who has since shown her a little bit of care. He’s in the process of paying her off after the marriage is annulled. At this point, she attempts to have sex with him, but he tries to kiss her, which she resists and breaks down crying, and he comforts her. I have so many problems with this scene, the idea that this strong woman, who seemed so together at the beginning of the film, is now so broken that she turns to one of her captors because he’s been a little kind to her, and ultimately becomes her saviour. I have no doubt she would be traumatised by all of this, but I find it hard to believe this would happen. Of course, it could be because of trauma from her home life, but we know very little about this, as character development was skipped. Abuse victims can form bonds with their abusers, but that would usually take a lot longer than 24 hours.
I know, I’m just an old guy moaning about something I don’t get, which is ok. Really, I just want to understand what makes this a Comedy-Drama Romance and not just a Drama. I saw no comedy other than normal comedy that happens when people get together, and I saw no romance, other than a spoiled, immature man-child asking a young woman to marry him so he didn’t have to go back to Russia. To me, that’s not romance. If it is comedy, I’d really like to understand what made you laugh; I really want to laugh as well.
So, the film is very good, along with the performances and writing, though a bit naive. I do agree with the writer that sex work should be decriminalised, but it also needs to be better understood, and respected, and the only way to do that is to engage with sex workers in all their forms, and at all social levels, nothing to do with romance, everything to do with understanding and respect.
