ANORA - Film Review - Fremantle Shipping News

An adult film for teenage fantasies.

What a strangely well matched pair in this modern romance of riches and roleplaying directed by Sean Baker.

Starring Mikey Maddison and Mark Eydelshteyn, this film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and justly so.

If you ask me, I can’t think of anything on this earth that could be more obnoxious than a horny overgrown boy with too much money and I imagine most people would agree with me.

Not Anora.

As far as she’s concerned, even after years of intimately studying humans at their worst under the low lights of the Headquarters strip club, it’s love at first lap dance.

That’s Amore?

In Anora’s, or Ani’s, eyes, young Vanya offers her a pathway to eternal bliss glittering with gold, champagne, white dust, and nightclub strobe lights. It is, admittedly, rather adorable to watch them develop a spark even while you’re cringing every time our smug malchik speaks.

A peek inside the bedroom of our “21 year old” still sporting his chin acne scars and socks while our heroine ruminates over her good fortune!

The pair impulsively enter into a whirlwind marriage.

Enter a curious mix of supportive (and not so) dancers, Russian and Armenian thugs, screaming matches, a disastrous baptism, catty rivalries, objects flying, impeccably dispatched glances, an overbearing mother, secrets failing to stay in Vegas, and a whole lot of bare skin on display right up to the camera lens.

Their antics had the audience in stitches and groaning in disbelief at the many faux paus committed by well meaning Armenians, intoxicated friends, and Russian oligarchs. It also turns out that Ani really is a force to be reckoned with, too.

Perhaps too much for her boy toy after all?

We are left wondering what’s worth crying over in the end.

Any more detail and I’d be telling.