My Review of Anora (2024)

 

Written And Directed by Sean Baker

Anora: "Oh, stay jealous, babe. Stay jealous, honey. Jealousy is a disease, remember that, Diamond. I'm just gonna go chill in my mansion or whatever, you know, no big deal!"

Yes, I finally managed to get to this much hyped Oscar contender of a movie. I was always going to watch but after watching Mikey Madison and Pamela Anderson's Actors On Actors talk the other day, it was time to watch it. Is it worth the crazy hype it's gotten? I think it might be.

Anyways Madison played the titular character, a sex worker named Anora Mekheeva, who also liked to go by Ani. In her line of business, she mostly had friends like Lulu (Luna Sofía Miranda) and rivals like Diamond (Lindsey Normington) and also admirers to boot.

One particular admirer came in the shape of spoiled son of Russian Oligarch named Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn). Vanya took a shine to Anora to the point where he was both buying her time from her job while at the same time getting a four carat ring to pop the question. Yup, Anora went from cash strapped stripper to marrying a spoiled rich guy before the first hour of the movie.

However getting married to Vanya came with consequences and those were associates of his family that Anora herself had to deal with. Enter the likes of Armenian handler Toros (Karren Karagulian), his henchmen brother, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Russian henchman Igor (Yura Borisov). Their goal was to get Anora to agree to an annulment on behalf of Vanya's parents. They had their work cut out for them.

For a tiny girl, Anora certainly had no problem in beating the shit out of both Igor and Garnick. She bit the former in the neck and broke the latter's nose and that's not to mention the barrage of verbal abuse she gave both of them as well as Toros. Vanya on the other hand just abandoned her to his parents henchmen.

Then there was the parents themselves. Galina (Darya Ekamasova) made her disdain for Anora well known while Nikolai (Aleksei Serebryakov) seemed absolutely bemused by his son's impulse marriage. Needless to say, this wasn't the fairytale ending for Anora and an ill advised near sex scene at the end somewhat concluded this movie on a murky note.

- For a movie that was highly sexualised, even I was surprised that Mikey Madison admitted they didn't use an intimacy coordinator for it.

- The mansion where a fair chunk of the movie took place was a Mill Basin mansion once owned by Vasily Anisimov, a oligarch with ties to Russia. 

- Standout music: Catherine Slater's Daddy AF, Take That/Calum Scott's Greatest Day and Roman Molino Dunn's Ice Cream.

- Chronology: Present Day Brooklyn as well as a trip to Las Vegas for both a wedding and an annulment.

Anora certainly lived up to the hype. Mikey Madison has certainly earned her award nods this season. It's a great movie with a love story that certainly ended on the kind of note it needed. It's also very funny in parts, which surprised me more.

Rating: 8 out of 10