Anora

9 *“I like Anora. I mean I like Anora more than Ani.” * Anora is a stylized, nuanced and brutal depiction of connection, objectification, and ambition. Anora finds its stride in its style of indie film-making, the realistic urban lighting, the personalized style of cinematography utilizing handheld cameras and close-up wide lenses, it works with a direction that stays consistent and matches the personal aesthetic of character relations and conflicts. It feels deeply human and culturally relatable through its screenplay, weaving deep-seated pain, longing and contrasting humanity with comedy through well-timed remarks and over-the-top vulgarity. The film explores sex-work with a careful nuance, respecting it while not steering clear from its negativity. In Ani we explore the effects of long-term sex work, the objectification in replacement of connection, and how humanity is diluted into assets. Self-worth is measured in body, money and status, and ambition takes form in the hustle, a trade of these assets and measurements. Nearly every characer is a selfish reflection of desire and self-preservation or continuation, ravishing in their lifestyles or appeasing one for their own sake. Mikey Madison delivers a strikingly comedic and coarse performance with an underlying poignancy in its elements and nuance. A husk of human connection, a perpetuating hustle for assets delivering vulgarity as a defence for the hidden pain beneath the flawed surface. In coping, defeat, victory and conclusion reversion lies in the same craft she has built her status upon, and that repells genuinity due to its unfamiliarity. This is what makes for such a powerful ending, the foreign reality of what has been diluted to object and industry, the unrecognized repelling, and the subsequent understanding. Anora is a grounded film that abandons triumph and perfection for honesty and passion, a human piece of storytelling that uses careful precision in volume and imperfection to deliver a stunningly genuine story.