Anora (2024)

Anora (2024)
Anora (2024)

Romantic comedies are the sweet dessert after every serious meal, or just simply a hug on a chilly day. The sequences are pretty much the same, and the endings are always happy. Why not? Who doesn’t wish that every story goes to the end in pure bliss? It’s safe to say that I’m a Disney girl so naturally that’s what I go back to no matter how much I’ve seen of the world. But just by looking at the synopsis, I confidently labeled Anora as a sequel to Pretty Woman which was absolutely wrong. Yes, there may be some similarities with Julia Roberts’ flick in terms of plot devices but director and writer Sean Baker has no interest in the ideal circumstances or happy endings. This film gives us a perspective of what relationships are – stressed, chaotic, and full of insecurities.

The focus in Baker’s work is always on the outcast whose story most of the films wouldn’t bother telling, and if they did, it wouldn’t be done sensitively. His characters are real, living in real worlds, well, as real as it gets within the framework of American cinema.

Tangerine, The Florida Project, and now Anora, only this time he chooses to tell the story of women engaging in sex work. Anora is gritty and funny in unexpected ways as it is realistic but it does feel with excessive length to me, the edges sort of anticipated since the moment the romance started to break down.

Anora (Mikey Madison) or Ani as she prefers, is a Brooklyn-based teen porn star hooker who meets an oligarch’s son Ivan (Mark Eidelshtein) and the two end up having a quick wedding in Vegas after falling in love. The two come back to earth and realize they are in love, have a ton of cash, and a wedding to show for it. It goes well until the news reaches Ivan’s parents about their son’s spontaneous marriage. In their attempt to prevent such an unfortunate event, they travel to New York City in an attempt to obtain an annulment for their son and return him back home. Unfortunately for them, Ani is not one to backtrack and a relationship that involves one-sided dominance leads to a night filled in an SUV with Toros (Karren Karaguilan), Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan), and Igor (Yea Borisov) – family wrestle power.

This is when the film goes into full-throttle mode after Anora and Ivan’s feud is revealed to the spectators.

It\’s absolutely ridiculous that the entire second act is as funny as the first minus the level of enthusiastic madness, as it is equally tense and stressful too, but surprisingly, it turned out to be my favorite segment of the film. Anora’s role is a bit strange because she is dragged around town by thugs in a futile attempt to find her missing spouse. (Pretty sure Prince Charming wouldn’t bail on CIndy like that) ICTY feat. None of the guys are all that bad. Toros is a tough nut, a realist. Garnick tries to live through the night. Whereas Igor is calm and contemplative. All of them, including Ani, are the playthings of the wealthy, which is a harsh truth all of them come to appreciate sooner or later. This quartet of adversaries transitioned into partners and faced endless challenges in the mouths of each other. One moment they are all on one side when there is cold weather or sparkling glass and they should be screaming at each other to shut up, then there is glass and I’m breaking it and it’s a perfect time to go back to yelling at each other. The chaos that ensued during the attempts to be doing the most saw them all the crazy couples in history have the best chemistry.

But we are made to think that it’s Pretty Woman all right, but Ani is not a Vivian.

She doesn’t need to be rescued by a wealthy man. Ani is not oblivious of her surroundings or her position in it either. She is conniving, stubborn, and unapologetic about her profession. In spite of my growing irritation with her New York accent, Madison gives a good performance that would make her a strong contender for numerous awards. Borisov, with his sad canine eyes in a weathered man, is still among the more interesting characters.In fact he is quiet- in a good way, and sad dog eyes make sense. Eidelshtein cannot hold a candle to B-rad from Malibu\’s Most Wanted, without the charm of the latter, which makes me wonder why this character had such a high caliber in the first place. And you can see how this character was so annoying that you\’d wish for him to be punished brutally.

And also last I reviewed, Sanders was moving the camera, more like Dropping cameras furiously to add to the tension of a love story that went horribly wrong. These young people keep making atrocious choices and the cinematographer makes the watcher experience the highs of youth, freedom, and drug use. But then Baker and Daniels change focuses which coincides with the plot twist – because it’s not the typical Cinderella story where the fitted glass slipper is the accent on a beautiful tale.

This story would have become stale within any other pair of hands but Baker knows how to keep us interested (most of the time) until the very last moment.

Anora is unapologetically honest, devastating, and rather surprisingly, amusing. More than once, Baker has resorted to experiences about oneself that he knows almost everyone else would consider best left unsaid without, however, belittling the old ones. Beneath its glitter accent and g-string, Anora is basically a classism story, a power play, and yes, about seeking and finding that someone or something important, all tucked within the very implausible romance of a sex worker. Achieving success, and falling in love, is possible but it is rare that such a phenomenon takes the form presented to us by society and Hollywood; after all, the latter sees the world through its filters.

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