Ani’s life isn’t exactly a fairytale.
She’s a stripper. And her side hustle is, ahem, escorting. She’s not exactly unhappy, but she’s certainly not living her best life either.
Then she meets Ivan.
Ivan is young, rich and willing to pay Ani’s “holiday” fees for her services. He’s also in need of a Green Card so that he won’t have to return to Russia to work for his father. But to all appearances, he does seem to be in love with Ani.
So, Ivan proposes to Ani. She accepts, and they’re soon married in Las Vegas.
Ani quits her job upon returning home. Ivan buys her a big ring. And they pretty much continue partying it up, only now as husband and wife.
But then Ivan’s family finds out. They’re none too pleased that he’s disgraced their family by marrying a prostitute. And they want the pair to have their marriage annulled.
Well, Ani isn’t willing to stand for that. And she’s pretty sure Ivan won’t either—or at least she hopes he won’t. But when Ivan’s parents send their goons (Toros, Garnick and Igor) to enforce the proceedings, Ivan runs off without her.
Ani thought Ivan loved her. Actually, she’s convinced he does but that he’s just scared of his family. But if somebody loves you, does he abandon you to three strangers forcing you to get a divorce, dodge your calls and go on a bender?
Although there are some early misunderstandings between Ani and Igor—she thinks he is trying to hurt her—the two eventually make peace. And Igor proves he’s not that bad of a guy by standing up for Ani and protecting her throughout the film.
For her part, Ani really does try to save her marriage.
Toros is forced to walk out in the middle of his godchild’s baptism.
The first 45 minutes (at least) of this film are pretty much nonstop party and sex scenes, with many explicit moments and images. Part of that is because Ani works at a strip club and does sex work on the side. But even after Ani and Ivan get married, the gratuitousness continues.
Ani and Ivan have sex both before and after getting married. And unfortunately, the camera doesn’t leave much unseen. Ani has sex with another man in one other scene, though she’s not married to Ivan at the time.
We see Ani and dozens of other women dancing provocatively without clothing (although thongs barely cover their genitals). Often, they perform gyrating moves on the laps of men, some of whom are married, allowing those men to touch them. One of Ani’s coworkers gets jealous after learning that Ani performed such a dance for her boyfriend. She gets back at Ani by doing the same to Ivan.
We see a man’s uncovered genitals in one scene (and obvious but clothed male arousal in others). Many characters prance around in their undergarments or otherwise revealing outfits.
We hear some rude terms for prostitutes. Ani claims that her family knows and approves of her “exotic” dancing, but she’s clearly not as proud as she pretends since she’s later ashamed of her profession.
Ani calls Igor an offensive term implying he is gay, and there’s later a joke that he was “born that way.”
Ani mistakenly believes that Igor is trying to sexually assault her. As a result, she gives him the fight of his life, punching, kicking and even biting him. Igor never takes a swing at Ani in self-defense, but he does wrap his arms around her body in an attempt to subdue her. (And later, her body is covered in bruises from this.) While doing this, Igor finds himself in some compromising positions, making Ani’s rape accusations a little more understandable, but we later learn this was completely unintentional. He simply didn’t know how to calm her down and was worried she would injure herself.
Igor eventually ties Ani’s hands with a phone cord. When Garnick walks in, he tries to help Igor tie her feet as well, but Ani kicks him firmly in the face with both feet, breaking his nose, blackening his eye and giving him a nasty concussion.
A man slips on ice and hits his head on the pavement while chasing Ivan. Two women get into a fistfight, and one scratches the face of the other, drawing blood. One of Ivan’s friends arms himself with a metal bat to intimidate Toros and the others. Igor snatches the bat from the guy’s hand and uses it to smash several display cases in the candy shop where the guy works.
When Ani says she might be pregnant, Toros tells her that if it’s true, she’ll be forced to get an abortion.
Ani talks to her friend about a client who gives her serial-killer vibes. She tells Igor he has “rape eyes.” Ivan plays a first-person shooter video game.
There are more than 400 uses of the f-word in Anora. For those keeping score at home, that’s about one every 20 seconds. And, of course, it’s not the only profanity used. There are nearly 40 uses of the s-word and one of the c-word. “A–,” “a–hole,” “b–tard,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “d–k,” “h—,” “p-ss” and “p—y” are each uttered multiple times. One particularly foul song repeats the word “p—y” probably 50 times in incredibly crude context. And we hear the derogatory term “f-ggot” five times to describe a man believed to be gay (he’s not).
God’s name is abused a dozen times, once paired with “d–n.” And Jesus’ name is taken in vain four times, twice paired with the f-word.
Continuous party scenes make up much of the film’s first act. We see people drinking, smoking, vaping and doing drugs (including cocaine and marijuana) in these scenes. But even non-party scenes contain a fair amount of drug and alcohol use. Some people talk about doing ketamine, but it’s unclear if they partake during the course of the film.
When Ivan’s parents arrive in person and make it clear what they expect, he submits to their wishes without argument. And not because he agrees with them but because he’s too afraid to stand up to them. This is heartbreaking to Ani. But adding insult to injury, she realizes that Ivan never actually cared about her. He was just using Ani for his own entertainment. His true colors come out—that he thinks she is trash, just as his parents stated.
After Ani realizes how little regard Ivan has for her, she submits to his parents’ wishes, too. And it becomes painfully apparent how Ani feels about herself as well: She has no self-worth. She married Ivan because she thought he truly loved her, despite her profession. She was excited to turn over a new leaf. But he didn’t love her. And instead, the one person she thought she could trust betrays her by treating her just like everyone else has her entire life.
Ivan makes several derogatory remarks about Toros and Garnick being Armenian.
We hear some people were kicked out of their hotel to make room for Ivan since he’s a bigger client. Spectators film a fight instead of breaking it up. People lie. A man steals a ring from his boss.
Every now and then, Plugged In will pass on reviewing a film because the content is so gratuitous, we feel it would be a bigger disservice to put those scenes into words than it would be to lay it out for our readers to decide for themselves. Unfortunately, sometimes a film will generate enough buzz come awards season that we’re forced to revisit it anyways—if for no other reason than to make sure our readers know what they’re getting into before they go see that Oscar-nominated flick.
That’s pretty much where we find ourselves with Anora.
The movie’s IMDb tagline should give you a pretty good hint of what’s to come: “Anora, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.”
But just in case that’s not enough of a deterrent, let me just say that the first 45 minutes or so set up Anora’s “fairytale.” I.e. there’s pretty much non-stop sex, nudity, strip clubs, partying and drug and alcohol abuse.
As if it wasn’t enough to assault our eyeballs, Anora also assaults our eardrums. I counted more than 400 uses of the f-word alone, including a few insertions into Jesus’ name.
And what, you may ask, does all that depravity get us in the end? Absolutely nothing. Because Anora—for all its labeling as a “romcom” and “dramedy”—is actually incredibly sad.
Really, this is the story of a young woman who has zero self-worth. Ani doesn’t know her value, which is what lands her in this messy plot to begin with. And by the film’s end, she feels worse about herself than she did before she got tied up into all the drama.
If you’ve gotten this far into my review, then what I’m about to say likely won’t come as a shock. I can’t speak into why Anora won the Palme d’Or (the prize awarded to the winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Feature Film) earlier this year or why it’s getting so much Oscar buzz now. However, I do know that it’s not worth shelling out your money to go see it all in the name of “art.”
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