ANORA

ANORA is a heavily hyped romantic dramedy that is likely going to be a Best Picture contender at the Oscars, despite the fact that it wallows in almost non-stop graphic sex and nudity throughout its entire first half and extreme amounts of foul language throughout the entire movie. It follows the story of a stripper/lapdancer/escort named Anora (Mikey Madison) and what happens when she gets married to the son of a Russian oligarch and the oligarch’s minions try to hunt the couple down and break them apart.

Anora is a “sex worker” in her 20s who spends her nights luring men into private rooms at her club in order to perform lap-dances for money. When she meets a young Russian man named Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) who is friendly and funny to her, she soon finds herself living in a PRETTY WOMAN scenario as she is paid $15,000 to be exclusive to Ivan for a week so he can look cool to his visiting cousins and friends in a week of partying in Las Vegas.

That week is pure hedonism, filled with graphic sex and nudity, as well as including plenty of alcohol and scenes in which everyone including Mikey snort cocaine or smoke marijuana cigarettes. This bacchanalia plus the movie’s highly sexualized first 15 minutes makes ANORA a near-pornographic experience for its first half hour.

Once Ivan’s guests are gone, he asks her to marry him, and Anora instantly says yes, leading to a fun montage in which the couple get legally married in Las Vegas’ famous Little White Chapel and frolicking in the streets. Howwever, their happiness won’t last long, as the word has spread that Ivan has married a prostitute (a term Anora angrily disputes), and his parents send their minions to New York to force an annulment.

When Ivan realizes what’s happening, he flees his dad’s house and disappears, leaving Anora stuck with the minions, including a sweet man named Igor (Yura Borisov) who is the only man who treats her with genuine kindness. As they search for the spineless Ivan, Anora attempts to escape via slapstick-style comical fighting and starts to realize her entire life has been shallow and exploited.

Will they find Ivan? Will they get annulled or make a real attempt at marriage? And will Anora wake up to the need for change?

ANORA is written and directed by Sean Baker, who has carved a niche of creating dramedies about trans prostitutes (TANGERINE) and porn stars (RED ROCKET). His movies are filled with graphic sex and nudity as well as a profusion of profanity, but he attempts to find an empathetic approach to depicting his characters’ debased lives.

ANORA has a frantic pace that does feature some funny scenes in the movie’s second half, when it stops exploiting its carnal material and shifts to a humorous tone when the search for Ivan begins. Mikey Madison shows she has some genuine comic chops and flashes of dramatic skill as well, particularly in the movie’s very powerfully emotional final moments.

As the kind-hearted Igor, Yura Borisov also offers a strong supporting performance. Mark Eidelshteyn as Ivan exhibits boyish energy and funny line delivery when he’s not engaged in graphic sexual scenes. The movie, though, runs 139 minutes, and could have been at least 20 minutes shorter. This would be accomplished easily by cutting its endless sex scenes in the first half.

Overall, ANORA should be avoided by viewers of all ages, which is a shame since it arrives at a truly touching conclusion, but the strong final moments come too little, too late to save this from being a morally abhorrent film. Media-wise adults will want to avoid ANORA, no matter all the hype it may receive.