Anora - ending

[Maggiethecat]

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

My local cinema ran this again after it won at the Oscars, so I went to see what the fuss was about.

Still not sure why it won to be honest.

I found the ending a real let down. To me it showed that she felt obliged to perform sexual favours in exchange for what he'd done. But he liked her and whilst not unwilling, didn't seem overly enthusiastic. When he tried to show her affection she hit back. I guess it showed how she'd been rather naively taken in by the other bloke. She'd obviously been operating on the sex + money = value delusion for a long time. But it felt like an add on, a scene put in to try and tie things up.

Still think there were other films much more deserving of Oscars.

On the contrary, I didn't define her performance by her looks. But we should all admit that in life, generally, everyone is judged by their looks.

About Carey Mulligan, that makes me think of actresses who have been too attractive for their roles. I remember seeing Little Women, and when Winona Ryder, playing the supposedly less attractive Jo, has cut off her long hair, a sister cries out, as in the book, "Oh, Jo, your one beauty" - and the whole audience laughed derisively, because of course WR is very attractive.

Nothing ‘remotely titillating’? You see the character of Anora fucked every which way. The male characters bumble along like fools and yet do all the fucking, excusing them as innocent bystanders.

Being physically beautiful is not a pre requisite for actors/actresses yet many still view actresses through the lens of a bygone era when actresses had to be beautiful even if they had little acting skill.

Why express, euphemistically, that you found Mikey to be ugly? As you imply, her performance was not affected by her coarse features.

We’ll comment if an actor in a role is hot, whether or not that’s relevant to the role but we’re unlikely to comment if he’s physically ordinary or unattractive. Why is that?

As for being too attractive for a role- I truly hope that production companies, studios, casting directors etc are evolving away from applying such ridiculous strictures when casting these days.

I just watched the film. It was not Oscar-worthy, but watchable.

I took the final scene as a way to show Ani that her interactions with men could be other than transactional. When she was fighting Igor in Vanya’s parents’ house he held her ‘for her own safety’, though it was all a bit slapstick and she would have definitely felt vulnerable and unsafe. And he held her once again in the car. And it made her feel safe in a more normal way and she didn’t know what to do with that as her experience of men didn’t compute that someone would want her to feel safe.

Resurrecting this thread after just watching this multiple Oscar winner. My god it’s unbelievable how it won best picture. I felt tricked into watching pornography and the depressing exploitation of young women by older men who were just pigs. The first half was nothing but sex and mind numbing drugs. Gratuitous transactional sex for no other purpose than titillation.

The premise that she hooked up with a young guy whose only redeeming feature was coming from serious money was not believable.

So what they consulted with strippers? I highly doubt those women’s lives were changed by the consultation. The film exploited them just like the johns do. The ‘montage’ of sex and drugs was a depressing reflection of where our western societies have come to given how it replaced the old falling in love montages of romcoms.

It is just incredible to me how it won best picture. It was boring and depressing and an excuse for soft pornography. I bet the male members of the academy loved ‘having’ to watch this film. That final scene, to me, was just another example of how damaged she was in using her body / sex merely as a thank you because he saved her ring. After all the amazing Oscar winners, we end up with this one. Incredible.

It was a hell of a lot better on those issues than Poor Things which sold itself as some female liberation fantasy while being pure male whacking off fantasy. I liked Anora, especially the last scene, and found it much more honest, engaged, funny and tender. But they’re both men telling stories about female sexuality and that is somewhat depressing. I’d have been happy for The Substance to win but it was never going to, and you’d not get a movie like The Brutalist by a woman about a woman doing something like architecture in the running. One day maybe but not in these times.

Completely agree with you about Poor Things. Again just a weird male fantasy thing. Other (male) people told me they found Anora funny and some liked the ending. It just seemed sad to me as I couldn’t see the humour.

Grinding away on top of a man she’d only met that day as a thank you was just sad to me. Her sobbing was the most honest as her fantasy happy ending disappeared and she saw returning to being a stripper and prostitute. Realistic yes, but really sad and depressing twist on the fairytale ending of the princess riding off with her prince that our daughters are repeatedly exposed to in their childhood.

Not voting for The Brutalist and going for Anora was Hollywood reverting to its sexist and misogynistic roots IMO.