First hitting the film festival circuit in May 2024, Anora won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and has since experienced a dream run, picking up nominations and awards along the way. Now it’s up for a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards, and it has an extremely good chance in taking out the top prize for the night. Considering its critical acclaim, many might be willing to check out the film if they haven’t done so already. However, Anora does come with a strong warning from this Christian film critic…
Content Guide
Violence/Scary Images: Mobster-style violence; a group of men will intrude, barricade, assault, and hold people hostage. Men forcibly pin a woman down so she doesn’t escape. They smash property with baseball bats and threaten others. One character gets a concussion and is prevented from seeking medical attention. A character vomits. One character frequently accuses others of rape.
Language/Crude Humor: Contains all the swears—f-bomb, s-word, big bad c-word, and variations. God and Jesus are said as exclamations. Derogatory language is used towards a sex worker.
Drug/Alcohol References: High level of drug abuse. Alcohol, vaping/cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, and pain killers are all consumed to excess (though it ultimately isn’t glorified). Ketamine usage is mentioned.
Sexual Content: Sex scenes and acts are simulated, but are heavy enough in content to be considered pornographic in nature depending upon definition (this is explained at length in the review). Brief full male nudity. Frequent full female nudity. An erection is seen under clothing. Naked women perform pole dancing, lap dancing, and erotic routines. There is no genital detail in sex scenes, but the camera does not cut away from the overall act, with characters seen thrusting against each other. One character gives sex advice during intercourse, and sex is a frequent topic of conversation. The main character is a sex worker/escort, and there is a significant amount of screen time dedicated to following her around her workplace.
Spiritual Content: None.
Other Negative Content: Gossiping and backstabbing. Infidelity. Those in power treating the lower class with disrespect, as though people are disposable. Frequent financial abuse. Lack of respect for marriage. A character lacks a frustrating amount of accountability and maturity.
Positive Content: The film humanises a group of people that are typically overlooked in society. It dares to look beyond sex to try and uncover deeper levels of human connection. The story’s focus on the “disposables” demonstrate how everyone has value, and how everyone deserves and craves true love.
Review
It is with a heavy heart that I must open my review of Anora with a warning: the film contains incredibly strong sexual content, and therefore will not be suitable for most Christian viewers.
Sex in film, or rather, narrative storytelling as a whole, is an interesting topic. In most circumstances, the act in the story is usually the pinnacle of a character’s sense of vulnerability. It’s normally considered to represent the highest of emotional stakes. On another axis, violence is peak of physical stakes in a story. For this reason, R-rated films, generally speaking, tend to feature the tensest, most gripping narratives, as they have the creative freedom to represent the highest stakes for the character. Sometimes sex is needed for the story to work.
That said, it’s a tricky element for Bible-believing Christian audiences to navigate. It’s not necessarily about sex itself—sex inside of marriage is a beautiful thing, and the naked form was considered natural and “good” in the Garden of Eden prior to the Fall. Rather, it comes down to how sexual acts are presented. Lust is a sin and is to be avoided, however, not all films intend to titillate their audience with their sex scenes. Sometimes they are for comedic effect. It could be for educational purposes. Other times the sex scene is meant to be grotesque. Another Best Picture nominee, The Substance, also contains a lot of nudity, but its presentation is more in line with evoking envy than lust.
So, what is the goal of Anora? Unfortunately, I can’t define the opening scene of the film as anything other than pornographic. I can’t with good conscience defend it, and I don’t use the term “pornographic” lightly. For me to define it as such, a number of criteria need to be met: it needs to contain sexually explicit content, its purpose is to arouse the audience, and there is an element of degradation of the person committing the act, as though they are nothing more than a void for the viewer’s fantasies. As the camera pans along and displays numerous naked women performing lap dances in slow motion with close ups on barely-clad crotches, the shot is purposefully wishing to see these women through the disposable lens of the adult entertainment industry. It’s an establishing shot for the world of the film—Anora is about a sex worker, and here we see the titular character at her workplace through the eyes of her patrons.
It’s possible to skip past it (go 2 minutes, 30 seconds into the film if you’re including the opening logos), however strong sexual content is present throughout the entire movie, but there is a notable shift in perspective. Essentially, after that time stamp, we get to know Anora as a person. Much like Sean Baker’s previous directorial work, the camera acts like a fly on the wall, as the audience follows Anora through a typical work shift. By doing so, the eroticism seeps away, and the sexual acts begin to feel more matter-of-fact. It morphs away from the realm of pornography, as unlike the adult entertainment genre, there’s an entire two-hour narrative attached which reshapes the audience’s perspective. We begin to see the world through Anora’s eyes, and in her line of work, sex doesn’t really mean a whole lot. In a flip of traditional narratives, sex in Anora is not the pinnacle of emotional stakes, rather it’s the prospect of marriage, which is exactly what a wealthy, young Russian man (Ivan, played by Mark Eydelshteyn) offers Anora after hiring her services as an escort. It’s a “Cinderella” story for Anora’s character, but unlike the fairytale, this story is set in the crushing confines of reality.
The film maintains an insightful pace. The first third of the movie whisks by as part of this whirlwind romance, where the events of two weeks feel like a blur of euphoria. The other two thirds of the movie are a drag. It’s intentional. The rich boy had his fun, and now the clean-up crew have arrived to try and fix up his mess. Anora is inextricably involved, where every passing moment her character is degraded in ways even the sex industry could not achieve. It’s heartbreaking. The class divide is ever-present in Anora’s version of The Hangover, where four characters that hate each other are thrust together in their quest to hold Ivan accountable. This ragtag team that develops mid-film have more in common than they’d like to admit, which makes things incredibly amusing for onlooking audiences. Anora hosts a gamut of emotions as a result, swinging from hilarity to gut-wrenching outcomes, all powered by a growing love for the central character of Anora and her fiery tenacity. It’s a devastating insight into the world of a woman that deals in sexual fantasy, when all she wants is to experience something real and to find true love. It’s a painful exploration of the concept of love being transactional, like the bleak cousin of Pretty Woman.
Should you watch it? That’s a question only you can answer as it’s entirely dependent on whether you can watch heavy sexual content without experiencing lust or falling into temptation. Not many can. It’s not a film that will be suitable for many Christian viewers. Let’s put it this way—if you were a person that decided to abstain from watching Game of Thrones due to its sexual content, then Anora is not for you. If you could and are still on the fence, then I’d recommend watching Sean Baker’s previous production, The Florida Project. Most of Baker’s films do contain an element of sex work (he likes to give a voice to those who are typically considered part of the lowest classes in society) but The Florida Project is a story told from the perspective of a child, and therefore, while prostitution is present, the film’s a lot lower in sexual content. This is to see whether you actually enjoy watching his directing style. Anora has a bit more forward momentum to it compared to The Florida Project, but both films aren’t presented as a formal narrative, rather it feels like more of a hangout with the characters. The filmmaking has a gritty quality to it and it’s organic in its development. Anora follows a traditional three act structure more so than Baker’s other films, but its style is still not something that will appeal to everyone. So, if you’re in doubt, watch The Florida Project, because there’s no point questioning whether you should consume such content if it’s the type of independent filmmaking that doesn’t interest you anyway.
In terms of the Oscars, Anora is the one to watch. The film has been a critical darling ever since its first screening, and now that Emilia Pérez is considered out of the race due to recent controversy, it leaves Anora with a good shot at winning the Best Picture category. The strength of the film lies more in its storytelling rather than its technical prowess, so a win for Best Original Screenplay is also on the cards. Despite a fierce acting performance from Mikey Madison (Anora) that is well-deserving of an Oscar, the academy does tend to take a person’s career into account, making it likely that Madison will lose out to Demi Moore’s more seasoned experience (who is also well-deserving of an Oscar for her performance in The Substance). Yura Borisov, who plays the hilariously reserved Igor in the film, is also up for Best Supporting Actor, though he faces some tough competition in the category, likely losing out to Kieran Culkin. As for Sean Baker, he has consistently created artistic works sharing unique voices, scoring nominations and wins for his craft for a while now. He will likely score the Best Director award, making Anora a film worthy of remembering in the history of cinema.
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