Anora - ending

[Maggiethecat]

Anyone seen it and what did you think about the ending?

I loved it (and the rest of the film too although I thought it was too long), but found it frustrating because it wasn't how I wanted it to finish. I did think it was the most realistic.

I don't want to post in any detail because it's only just come out though 😖

@SocksAndTheCity - I agree that it was way too long and that there were a number of scenes that dragged.

It was her emotional reaction at the very end that I’m trying to work out but will wait until it has run for a bit to explore without spoiling.

Well she'd had a hell of a couple of days including having to realise something she'd really believed in wasn't what she thought. Add in sleep deprivation and the general stress and unpleasantness and I think it all just got a bit too much, especially when somebody was unexpectedly kind to her.

I liked that it showed how marginalised people are treated by others without being prurient or exploitative itself, and I think Sean Baker has always been good at this (in Tangerine especially), probably because he got sex workers involved in the production so the little details are coming from people who actually know what they're talking about.

Ani was unhappy at the end, but she wasn't unhappy because she was a sex worker. I did want to slap the gormless little shit she took up with pretty much throughout though.

I was a bit cautious about expressing some of this without being too revealing.

It was quite the emotional rollercoaster for her so I was glad for the kindness shown.

Don’t think I’ve seen any of Sean Baker’s work.

I know, it's so difficult!

Keeping it general, I thought Mikey Madison was amazing (complete with a Brooklyn accent you could slice, even if it did veer off a bit now and again) and parts of it were sweet and very funny - more than I was expecting.

i was also very happy to see Aleksei Serebryakov again; I loved him in Nobody a couple of years ago and it's made me want to get on iPlayer and have a look for McMafia 😀

I think the ending was trying to show that Ani’s emotional currency, or currency with men, had always been sex , until then.: it was what she had always relied on. She realised then that she needed something deeper because he was offering/insisting on emotion as part of the act

I hated the whole film and the ending and her acting and everything

I really enjoyed it although thought it lagged a bit I the "search" sequence. I found it v sad that she felt expected to thank him with her body (that's my interpretation anyway)

Agree. I found the quiet ending and then silent titles really powerful and poignant. I think particularly so after the noise and craziness of the rest of the film. Really enjoyed this film.

SPOLER ALERT

I liked the ending.

I interpreted her tears as a reaction to the emotional rollercoaster of what had happened to her with Vanya and how she'd been treated by him (I also wanted to slap him!) and his family.

But, more importantly, I felt the tears were her realisation that she, just like Igor, was only ever destined to follow a particular path. If the film had continued, she would have gone back to HQ.

I also felt the way she reacted to Igor when he tried to kiss her, slapping him, was potentially taking away her only power/agency and would have made her vulnerable. She couldn't deal with that.

I'm just glad I didn't watch it in the cinema 😳

Just watched it. I think the ending reflects the worst physical and existential hangover one could imagine. I disagree that she will necessarily go back to HQ. She's made a lot of cash from that week with the little brat, plus the divorce 'fee' and her ring. Yes, she is back at her flat after that weird rollercoaster but I think her breaking down in tears probably has to do with whatever trauma she's accumulated until that point, and her finally reaching emotional breaking point. I read it more as some sort of release. She is a tantalising character because we can tell she has substance (as opposed to Vanya, who is just too afraid to even find out who he is besides a scared little boy and a hopeless coke head). There are hints that she is bright and possibly even educated. We don't know what got her into the nightlife and sex work. We don't know her circumstances and that's important because we are meant to accept her without a 'pity' story. I think that's an important point. Clearly she's the heroine and the only one worthy of respect (and perhaps Igor too). An optimist will see the ending as her beginning to take stock and address her past (whatever lay there) and a pessimist will see her trapped into an inescapable vicious cycle of exploitation. The choice is hers - and ours as viewers.

I just watched this film. No idea how it won an Oscar. It wasn’t rubbish but not Oscar worthy imho.

I've just finished it - it was long and boring in the middle with all the searching and I didn't like any of the characters, so in the end didn't care much what happened to them. She was very naive not to see that Ivan was just a spoilt very young brat and was never happy husband material. The many are a bit baffling.

Oscars!

Thought it was pish. A. Real Pain is a much better film.

I loved it. The pain she showed throughout that lifted with her relationship with Vanya. She wanted her fairytale, her Pretty Woman moment so badly.

Her tears, imho, are a mixture of relief, frustration and anger - she is at a turning point and Igor has made her face it. He genuinely cares but all she has left is her body.

I agree. Thought was stupid

Sorry. This is long(ish). I really enjoyed the film but after I saw it I had some thoughts and wanted to start grappling with them here. Be warned there are SPOILERS.

I feel that this film wants to come across as having more integrity than a film like, say, Pretty Woman, by self consciously boasting its feminist credentials. However for me, it ultimately fails in that regard. The constant referencing of and shoutouts to the anonymous and homogenous "sex workers" who were exploited consulted in the making of the film highlight the dodginess of the filmmakers approach and on reflection I find this film ambiguous and problematic: it toys with the patriarchal tropes of the loudmouthed yet vulnerable prostitute (tart with a heart) and professes to refute the stereotype but because much of the excitement of the film is generated by the viewer's voyeuristic pleasure derived from Anora and the other women's "dancing" and sexual performances, the film ends up leaning into those very stereotypes.

Anora has no real agency. Her business like approach to transactional sex rather than making her...well, "businesslike" ultimately reveals her crushing vulnerability, her quick acceptance of marriage her naiveté. If Anora was played by Demi Moore you would have an interesting film because an older woman might enter into the agreement with a degree of self knowledge and experience (been there done that several times). The film might then have a more dangerous edge because you'd never quite know who was playing whom.

This is a film that never turns the camera on the viewer and that's what you kind of want. The Substance turns the camera on the viewer and we recoil in disgust at the way the filmmaker destroys our pleasure in watching beautiful women gyrate and do striptease for us onscreen*.

Anora's big win at the Oscars keeps filmmaking locked in the patriarchy no matter how many sincere shoutouts they give to the invisible "sex work community."

I agree with that Zebedee.

interestingly I read today that the film’s marketing budget was bigger than the film production costs.

The productions costs were pretty low I think, @Hyperfish808 ; something like 6 million?

The complaining about the nude/dancing/sex scenes is just odd when there's nothing remotely titillating in the film; I posted this on another thread, but I thought it demonstrated the day to day mundanity very well, and that Ani's dancing was just looked bit incongruous and silly when it was transplanted to somebody's living room in broad daylight.

The women in the film playing her best friend (Luna) and her enemy in the club are both New York strippers, so not exactly 'anonymous'? I suppose they shouldn't have been allowed to be in it, like the many women who have been turned down for or fired from other jobs because of prior or current sex work

I would love it if the film makers announced that the way they were supporting the "sex work community" is by training them in behind the camera skills to enable them to write and direct their own films. But I suppose that's a bit radical.

Totally agree and it won't Oscars, unbelievable but then I hated The Substance as well which seemed to upset a lot of people on here.

@DBD1975 me too!

I finally saw it and was surprised that the theater had fewer than a dozen other people, despite the Oscars.

It was quite a surprise, much better than I ever expected – and I was pleased that I let it be a surprise, knowing nothing, except that maybe it dealt with sex workers. I was even more impressed that Sean Baker is writer AND director AND co-producer AND editor, because that can often go wrong.

The curious thing is that it’s not my kind of movie, so I’m always pleased to be open-minded. It’s the most sexual movie I’ve seen in a long time. With about the first third of the movie being pretty much all sex, with no real plot, the dialogue mindless and profane, I still can’t figure out why I remained interested. One reason may be the lead, Mikey Madison as Anora. She isn’t at all beautiful to me - rather coarse-featured - but has an expressive face, and certainly gives herself up totally to every aspect. Everything she depicts - teasingly sexual, affectionately cuddling, shriekingly combative - is perfectly convincing. I’m hugely glad I knew nothing of the plot, so although it was clear that the wealthy idyll with her new young, dim Russian boyfriend would go south, I wasn’t exactly sure how.

There’s no background to the characters, but it still works surprisingly well. I’m not sure I’d have voted for it for Best Picture, as it isn’t my idea of an award-caliber film, but it certainly is perfect for what it is. I was also surprised that I laughed a half-dozen times, mostly at the battle between Anora and the thugs, which, again, isn’t my kind of humor.

I was told that this hasn’t grossed much money, although I would have imagined people would have rushed to see it to enjoy the abundant nudity, madcap sex and wild, noisy partying. But clearly this can cross boundaries, too. I was very impressed.

‘coarse featured’ - do you mean to say, in a refined way, that you find her ugly or unattractive?

It’s interesting how we often define actresses and their performances by their looks. Reminds me of Carey Mulligan railing against a review that suggested that she wasn’t attractive enough to be convincing in one of her roles.