Anora (2024) came home with five Oscars at the 97th Academy Awards, winning five out of the six categories it was nominated for, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Editing, and Best Cinematography.
Anora stars Mikey Madison as the titular Anora character– nicknamed Ani throughout– and Mark Eydelshteyn as Ivan– nicknamed Vanya throughout.
It follows the life of Ani, a sex worker in New York, as she ends up meeting Vanya, the son of a Russian billionaire, and soon marries him in a shotgun wedding. But, Vanya’s very rich family doesn’t really approve of their marriage and soon threatens to drive a divide between the two of them.
Mikey Madison definitely deserves her Oscar for Best Actor. She portrays Ani with spunk, power, and moxie. She holds herself the way most young, twenty-year-old women would hold themselves, with a deep excitement for some things and a deep stubbornness for others. Her performance is exceptional, and she perfects the Brighton Beach Brooklyn accent.
Yuriy Borisov, the actor for Igor, was nominated for supporting actor, although he lost to Kieran Culkin from A Real Pain. Borisov did an exceptional job as Igor, portraying his character as though he is a wet puppy left on the side of the street. Half of the movie he spends acting as though he was beaten to a pulp and left to beg for change in the alleys of Chicago, with the wide-eyed gaze of someone who truly has no idea what to do next. In the other half of the movie, he acts as an– utterly baffled but equally concerned– soldier staring down the fall of Rome.
And it’s amazing.
The directing was powerful, with the cinematography heightening and engaging the audience, making the film visually stunning. Sean Baker puts so much empathy into his film, especially in the portrayal of Ani.
The dialogue feels natural and fluid, and the plot is coherent, digestible, and honestly a little spectacular. The character work is exceptional, with Mikey Madison telling ABC News that she had spent five months working on her character before filming.
And while this film is highly recommended and a hundred percent Oscar-worthy, it is rated R, so make sure to heed the sex, nudity, and language warnings.
And now, onto some spoilers. (If you haven’t seen the movie: Go!!! Leave!! Vanish!!! Watch the movie and then come back and read this.)
– Warning: this section will have Spoilers for the movie Anora, proceed with caution –
Anora is a powerful movie. It isn’t a character study in the traditional sense; we never see much into Ani’s backstory nor the events–traumatic or not–that made her who she was. It’s a character study in the fact that we follow Ani through the traumatic event. An event that will not define her but will definitely damage her and her future relationships.
That being said, the movie has a few flaws. For one, in the second scene between Ani and Vanya, when Ani goes over to his house, it becomes a bit difficult to suspend your disbelief. What sort of woman would ever go over to a man’s house alone, especially if that man was a client to your job as a sex worker who you have only ever met once?
So, sometimes you can tell that this was directed by a man. But mostly, it is portrayed with so much understanding that it isn’t noticeable at all.
It puts sex work in a very real light, making it easy to relate to and understand the characters and their different motivations, desires, and personalities.
It is genuinely surprising how quickly this movie went from romance to buddy cop. Because it was very quick. It took the film approximately five minutes to transition.
Because it switches genres very quickly.
Anora utilizes the second-act genre switch, a tool that many movies use. Knives Out (2019) uses this same method. The first act is a Whodunit, the second is a crime thriller, and then it returns back to a mystery for the third act. Anora is very similar. It begins as a romance, then it becomes a slapstick, buddy-cop comedy when the second act hits. And then, when we make it to the third act it becomes a drama.
The switch comes the moment after Vanya runs out the door– if a bit before. Now that Ani is alone, a lot of– dare it be said– “shenanigans” begin to occur. It’s absurd and hilarious and genuinely enjoyable.
But then Father Toros appears. He’s a priest, and with him, you expect the gravity to return.
When he walks into Vanya’s living room, finding the boy’s newly-wed wife gagged and tied up, held down as she screams and writhes by pupp-dog-baffled-at-his-own-actions Igor. And he looks at the scene of chaos, utterly flabbergasted, and makes some rational decisions.
Finally. A reasonable person.
Until, of course, his car is towed. A little after he had convinced Ani to go full-on Blue’s Clues investigation with him and the two messiest people alive, his car broke down. Instead of handling it– at all– he decides to forget normal conversations in favor of catching the kid who his job depends on and literally drives his car out of the tow truck’s grip.
And you realize, with a blistering clarity, that no one in this movie is sane.
The hijinks last a while. A restaurant argument takes place, a man throws up, a girl fight happens, a shop is brutally destroyed, a five-minute walk becomes a thirty-minute one. Not in that order.
And then we return to Vanya. Who is swept up by his parents, forced to divorce Ani, and really acts childish about the whole ordeal.
And then Ani– Anora– is alone. Without a support structure, a job, a living situation, or anything much to her name.
Anora is many things. But first and foremost, it is a film—a film about love and betrayal and hope and naivety.
And it’s also about sex. There’s a lot of sex in Anora. You could even argue gratuitously so.
But it holds a purpose. A sense of symbolism. It changes throughout the film, going from a job to a way to create intimacy. Ani begins in complete control before slowly letting herself grow vulnerable. Then, sex is dropped abruptly at the beginning of the second act, after being such a key part of the first act.
And it isn’t picked up fully until the final scene where Ani– heartbroken, betrayed, hurt, destroyed, and lonely– is given kindness and comfort.
And she doesn’t know what to do with it. She doesn’t know how to connect with this man in any way except with sex. But then, Igor tries to kiss her—a soft, genuine kiss without any sort of desire or trickery. And then, in between the slow rumble of the car engine and the breathing of the man underneath her, she breaks down crying.
And with that, the movie ends.
