Now that it’s on Hulu, I finally watched “Anora.” When it was over, my first reaction was, “How did this win the Oscar for Best Picture?”
I don’t think Oscar voters get it right every year. After all, they have given the award to dreck like “Green Book,” “The Artist,” and “Chariots of Fire.” But by any standard, “Anora” does not deserve the praise it has received.
The story is simple.
Ani (Mikey Madison) is a stripper in a New York club, spending her work hours convincing men to go to a VIP room with her so she can wriggle on them topless. The longer (and presumably harder) she grinds against their groins, the more money she makes. Unlike the strippers played by Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu in “Hustlers,” Ani and her colleagues don’t drug their clients or steal their money. They earn it all through friction and making each guy feel special.
One night, a drunk, wealthy, young Russian named Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) avails himself of Ani’s services for quite a while — it helps that she speaks Russian. When he asks if she ever meets men outside the club, she tells him she does, and goes to his gatehouse-guarded mansion the next day, where she negotiates a fee and has sex with him. A lot.
They then spend a week together (with the requisite fee increase), during which he takes her to Las Vegas, impressing her by spending money like crazy on the hotel, food, and lots of alcohol. As the spoiled scion of a wealthy, powerful family, he’s used to throwing around cash to get whatever he wants — including Ani. While in Vegas, he buys her a full-length sable coat and a large diamond engagement ring, convincing her to marry him at one of the local wedding factories.
And that’s when the trouble begins.
You see, Ivan’s oligarch parents are not happy their immature son has taken a sex worker as his bride. From then on, the parents and their goons insist the marriage be annulled. And by “insist,” I mean “by force.” Ani refuses, and hates that they refer to her as a prostitute, although I’m pretty sure that’s the correct term for someone who exchanges sex for money.
So “Anora” breaks down to three acts: 1) Ani writhing half-naked on top of horny men; 2) Ani and Ivan partying and having sex with the frequency you’d expect of people in their early twenties; and 3) lots of yelling and cursing between Ani and the henchmen sent to separate her from Ivan — and even more verbal blasts once his parents show up.
Just as “Anora” didn’t deserve to be named Best Picture, I have no idea how members of the Academy named Mikey Madison the Best Actress of the year. Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with beautiful topless women dancing or simulating sex in movies, but Madison made no bold choices, didn’t make me care about Ani very much, and did nothing other than scream at top volume in the last third of the story.
Yes, she did a better job than the leads in other bad movies about strippers (e.g. Elizabeth Berkely in “Showgirls,” Demi Moore in “Striptease”). But Madison’s performance in “Anora” is nowhere near as good as Sadie, the Manson family member she played in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” or when she portrayed Pamela Adlon’s oldest daughter, Max, on the wonderful FX show “Better Things.”
Writer/director/editor Sean Baker (who also won two Oscars for “Anora”) clearly has intimate knowledge of what goes on in those VIP rooms (no, honey, really, I was only at the Bada Bing all night to do research!). But he really should have watched what Marisa Tomei was able to do opposite Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler.”
“Anora” lacks any hint of subtlety, surprises, or three-dimensional characters. I give it a 3 out of 10, which is a long way from deserving to be named Best Picture.