Anora (2024) — Review
A little late to the party, but better late than never…right?
The truth is, I have been putting off watching this film for so long, despite hearing great things about it, because a part of me knew I wasn’t going to like it — even though I really, really wanted to. After it did well at the Oscars, some people (as they tend to do whenever something does well) switched up on it, claiming that it was good-but-it-wasn’t-that-good, and that Demi Moore was robbed (we’ll come back to that later). In a way, I felt a bit reassured, because whenever you hear exclusively positive things about something, its bound to set you up for disappointment; now, I could go into it after hearing more balanced opinions.
And, to be honest, that more accurately reflects how I feel about it — it wasn’t by any means terrible, but I didn’t love it either. But, let’s start with the positives:
It was beautifully shot. There is no denying that — from a purely aesthetical point-of-view, it is gorgeous and I do wish I had seen it in the cinema rather than at home. I enjoyed the cinematography in both the more frenetic, glitzy first act (which felt like something out of Euphoria) and the bleak, minimalist visuals in the second and third act.
I do also think Mikey Madison’s performance was good. (Was it Oscar-worthy? I don’t know, and I doubt that she would’ve won if this came out at a different year. But the competition for leading actresses this year wasn’t stellar, as much as that saddens me to admit. Although I much preferred The Substance, and possibly think Demi Moore’s performance was better, she didn’t stand a chance as she was only in half the film. If you’ve ever seen those “Top 10 Acting Performances of All Time” which have been parodied to death, you’ll notice they mostly consist of people shouting for 3 hours straight, so I guess Anora fits the bill from that perspective.)
The only scene which I actually felt something for any of the characters was the final one, when Anora goes back to her old life — which we see as much more depressing, despite her insisting that she loves what she does. But is one good scene enough to make up for everything I disliked about the film?
Not really, no. Especially not in a film with this run time.
That’s actually a good starting point — I felt like the majority of scenes in this film could have been much, much shorter. From the point that Ivan goes missing, there is frankly very little plot. They seemed to stretch about 3 lines of dialogue over 20 minutes, usually whilst shouting in a way that was supposed to be funny, but wasn’t. There was a stylistic choice to have multiple screaming matches going on at the same volume (as opposed to fading the less important one out). I’m not saying this is inherently a bad thing, I’m sure I’ve seen it in other films and it has worked better for me, but I can’t say it added to the experience in Anora.
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And the dialogue, oh god, the dialogue. It felt like it was written by a privileged, middle aged white man trying to imitate a young, working class woman…oh wait.
Can we please talk about Sean Baker’s fetish for sex workers? Because that’s what it is. There gets a point where it’s not representation anymore, there is something else on going (especially if you combine that with who he follows on Twitter). Even if the last scene slightly changes things, the film spends far too much time romanticising sex work and objectifying women — I’m not expecting a film about sex work to be PG, but this film is so male gaze-y. To circle back to the dialogue, something rubbed me the wrong way about Anora’s very odd repeated comments about Igor wanting to rape her, if he doesn’t he must be gay, etc. etc….I mean, who talks like that? If it was a one off comment I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but the extremely drawn-out conversation about this made me cringe.
Also, when you have visuals like this:
and this:
you really have to question the messages the film is trying to send.
Maybe I’m a little biased because when I was a teenager, the contemporary feminist rhetoric tried to brainwash young girls into thinking that sex work, BDSM, organised religion, plastic surgery etc. was empowering because any choice a woman makes is inherently feminist (spoiler alert: it definitely isn’t). I’m sure some people might look at those images and tell you they’re a genius visual metaphor for her feeling trapped or something along those lines, but I’m a bit more cynical.
I can’t tell you that I think this film is necessarily making a commentary on sex work either way — just because the audience interprets it as feminist or antifeminist doesn’t mean the director was intending it to make a political statement. (Obviously, everything is political whether or not we consciously realise it, but my point still stands).
But ambiguous messaging aside, there just wasn’t a lot in here I can say I enjoyed.
(Although, I have to admit, the guy who played Ivan was pretty cute, so at least it had that going for it.)
