Annoying Anora

Drip a drip a drip a drip droplet

Submitted by jmfilm

The Oscars do not matter anymore. People do not watch the red carpet entrances, the stars seem smaller and the night drags on and on. They may not matter to the masses as they once did, but they still matter in the industry. People are rewarded or coronated. Awards can push the industry in a direction by showering a film with awards. Moonlight won best picture in 2016 with portrayals of black social dysfunction and never would have been funded had not Precious been a commercial and critical success, including two Oscars. Anora was this year’s big winner so what does it say and what might it point to? It’s more than just sex on film.

Anora is an All-American tale of a Russian New Yorker who gets caught up in a wild romance with a spoiled Russian brat or blyat, I don’t know I heard blyat nonstop in the film, and then has to navigate a high stress night with Russian and Armenian mobsters. It’s not really relatable. It’s not All-American. It’s hard to see what this could push for the industry.

At the heart of it, the problem is Ani is deeply unlikeable. She is not the hooker with a heart of gold character that Hollywood recycles, which was a nice creative choice, but she was not the shrewd, street smart type that is found in strip clubs across America. Ani starts off sharp, realizing the cashcow she found to milk, negotiating for a higher weekly rate when Vanya makes an offer. She then changes from a guarded, observant stripper/escort to a naive dope who thought she could possibly talk herself into a rich family with a good first impression. Baker missed a chance at a nice symmetry by not having Ani try to negotiate a higher payoff from Toros when she has him by the balls when he offers $10,000 for an easy annulment. A street smart hooker would know the play while tied up by Russian thugs who want just one thing from her that they desperately need her agreement to get.

A slightly more sympathetic or more consistent lead would go a long way. Mikey Madison, rewarded with an Oscar for her acting, puts on a good performance, but doesn’t really generate any audience concern or care for how her character’s arc will end. After a while, you stop caring how it ends because you know how it will, just not every step. By the time “All The Things She Said” plays and Vanya shows up your first thought is “finally, they will find this asshole and end this film” and your second thought is “no way is a Manhattan strip club playing an obscure one hit wonder from twenty-five years ago.” By the time the final scene rolls around, you might even hope Igor kills her as some final order from the oligarchs, but Ani mounts Igor because she is an empty husk who knows no other way to express thanks or appreciation than sex. She is an annoying stripper from scene one to the final shot.

A couple good things could come from this film’s success. Anora earns its R rating with actual sex scenes. They range from mechanical to more romantic and normal couple’s sex. This was once a norm for drama films to include sex with some emotion. We can have that back. The other thing would be the industry taking chances on those low and lower-mid budget films that used to populate the holiday season as Oscar bait but have disappeared in recent years due to profitability concerns. No one buys DVDs anymore, but Anora topped Amazon’s top ten after the Oscars.

These films need to be made. Chances need to be taken. Not many of the last decade’s Oscar winners have memorable moments, but to Anora’s credit the search for Vanya through the nooks and crannies of the city is a great sequence. Hollywood is struggling, but we need less spandex CGI slop and more $10 million dollar rolls of the dice that tell an actual story and leave us with some scene we will never forget.