erikstuborn

It's a shame that an artist like Sean Baker, who has devoted much of his work to dignifying and giving visibility to sex workers (in his previous films 'Starlet' and 'Red Rocket', for example), has chosen such a hackneyed and predictable story for his big-budget film.

One of the interesting things about Baker's work was his ability to create unresolved tension; the sense of permanent unease that his characters lived with (always walking a tightrope) was what gave his films their value and power.

In Anora, everything seems easy, until, predictably, it stops being so. First surprise for a Baker film: you see the disaster coming. It doesn't take you by surprise. Then pandemonium breaks out (with more than twenty minutes of the film in which everyone screams), unbearable in a way that any other director (Guy Ritchie, for example) would have resolved in three minutes with two well-aimed punches.

That means it's a film that isn't 'serious', that the thugs aren't serious, the oligarchs aren't serious, the sex workers aren't serious. It's all frivolous and banal, therefore implausible and dispensable.

I think you should go back to low-budget cinema and revisit your lumpen characters, where you found your narrative style and inspiration. This world of rich people isn't for you, Sean.

Compared to his first two (and important) films, 'Mr & Mme Adelman' and 'La belle époque', this one falls far short in terms of wit and depth. It develops situations and characters that could be interesting at first glance but end up flat and unconvincing in the final cut.

Marine Vacth, who is gorgeous, plays a character who is adrift, unable to make the right decisions in a world to which she does not belong. Pierre Niney plays a character with no particular charms or skills, which makes the attention he attracts from women seem implausible. Adjani builds a character knowing that what she is presenting is herself as an outdated figure at the end of a glorious career, and she does so magnificently.

The well-constructed set and the camera movements, which are so accurate and restrained that they are barely noticeable, immerse us in the world of wealth and glamour of the French Riviera.

The other actors perform with dignity and style, demonstrating director Nicolas Bedos' ability to handle actors.

However, the script, treated as a flashback with a subgenre of courtroom drama in the background, confuses and blurs the main story, which would be simple and easy to tell if this back-and-forth technique had not been used. This is probably more of an editing error than a script error, and I think it has cost the film better ratings.

I came to see this movie because of the reviews in various digital magazines that talked about the great CGI work they had done to adapt the city of Trieste as a setting to shoot the NY scenes. That's what mainly got my attention.

I'd say the first half is acceptably okay, being a movie 'with kids' (a subgenre that doesn't particularly appeal to me). The first part in Naples, which someone has defined as 'neo-realistic', has its interesting moments, with curious twists that, although it doesn't end up being a great movie, it keeps you sitting in your seat.

The problem begins after an hour of filming, when we see the first scenes of the ship sailing, 'aerial' shots with a CGI design of the 90's and that look like a cheap ad. If there was no budget why put those scenes? They could have avoided them.

But when the movie sinks is in NY. From that moment on, the plot, the dialogues and the construction of the characters fall apart. With one cliché after another, with all the commonplaces of movies about 'Italians in America' reheated without grace or originality. Nothing that happens is believable, neither the Little Italy location, nor the procession (didn't the director and screenwriter see The Godfather II?) nor what the actors do and say. Nothing is saved.

The characters are left without a script, without corporeity, what they say and what they do has neither consistency nor drama (which there should have been). The film, both in its staging and in the construction of characters, becomes a caricature. What a pity!

What happened to them? Precipitation? Lack of budget?

Or did they think that with Fellini's name in the credits and the promise that there is a 'treatment' of this film made by him, as an unrealized project, it would be enough to build a powerful story and the necessary magnitude to be able to stand next to monuments like 'The Godfather' or 'Once Upon a Time in America'?

Just seeing that there are only three reviews I imagine that few people have seen it and even fewer have wanted to comment on it, so I am encouraged to make this review and not recommend this film because for me it has been one of the great disappointments of this year.

The only thing that could be saved is the performance of the two children. I wish them the best.