Stubs - Anora

Anora (2024) starring Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Aleksei Serebryakov. Directed by Sean Baker. Screenplay by Sean Baker. Produced by Alex Coco, Samantha Quan, Sean Baker. Run time: 239 minutes. Color. USA Comedy, Drama

Sometimes the hype hits the road and it’s not a pretty sight. You hear over and over again how good a film is and how many awards its won and you think you need to watch it to keep up. A few years ago, it was Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and this year it’s Anora. But after watching, you wonder why it’s being hailed as a possible Academy Award Best Picture winner.

From left to right, Igor (Yura Borisov), Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), Toros (Karren)
 Karagulian), Anora "Ani" Mikheeva (Mikey Madison) and Michael Sharnov (Artyom Trubnikov).

Anora is the story of a short-lived relationship between Anora "Ani" Mikheeva (Mikey Madison), a 23-year-old stripper living in Brighton Beach, and Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), the spoilt son of a Russian oligarch. He’s supposed to be minded by Toros (Karren Karagulian), an Armenian holy man. The relationship is mostly sexual, as Anora is paid for sex by Vanya, but on a capri trip to Las Vegas, Vanya decides to stay in America and proposes to and marries Anora.

Newlyweds Vanya and Anora at the height of happiness.

You would hope that a woman like Anora would have been through enough in her short life to see through Vanya’s bravado about hating his parents. But she doesn’t and when word reaches Vanya’s parents, Nikolai (Aleksei Serebryakov) and Galina Zakharova (Darya Ekamasova), Toros is sent to break it up. He enrolls his brother Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan), who further brings along Igor (Yura Borisov) to help.

But Vanya bolts rather than stand up for himself and a majority of the film seems to be spent looking for him; some would say an inordinate amount of time. Vanya is eventually found and the marriage is annulled. Anora gets paid off and seems at the end to realize Igor is not such a bad guy.

Seeing as Anora is a stripper and prostitute, even though she doesn’t like being called that, there is a lot of nudity and sex. But all of the gratuitous sex is not enough to make the film more watchable. It is slow-paced. The dialogue, despite being nominated for Best Screenplay, is nothing special, and I’m not saying that because some form of the word “fuck” is used more times than I could and would want to count. There isn’t very much, if any, character development. All of the characters are pretty much the same at the end as they are when we first meet them.

And don’t let the genre comedy/drama fool you into thinking the film is funny; it isn’t. There is a brief bit at the end, when Anora tells off Vanya and Galina Zakharova and the father reacts, but that’s far from this film being a comedy in any other sense of the word.

Anora "Ani" Mikheeva (Mikey Madison)

Mikey Madison gives, I’ll say, a brave performance. I don’t believe any other Best Actress nominee has been as nude on the screen as she is, but she does give a good performance as Anora. I do find myself concerned for her safety and that worry doesn’t stop when the film ends. She’s a bit thick, but she does finally realize Vanya is a loser.

The character I ended up liking the most was Igor, played by Yura Borisov, who, while a hired henchman, is not really a bad guy. He doesn’t know Anora, but he does seem to feel for her situation and does what he can for a woman who once bit him in the neck. He’s sort of real-world version of Vanya, as he lives with and drives his grandmother’s car. Borisov does a good job with the character.

The film doesn’t seem to come anywhere near to living up to its hype. I may be wrong and it may sweep the Oscars, but while this is a good independent film, it doesn’t deserve to go down in history as a Best Picture winner.