https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/video/detail/B0DJ489RBT/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r
Having swept the 97th Academy Awards with five trophies — including Best Picture, Director, Actress, Screenplay, and Editing — Anora arrives under the kind of fanfare that would make even the most cynical viewer raise an eyebrow. I pressed play more out of curiosity than devotion — a “free to watch” click rather than an act of pilgrimage.
What unfolds is, at first glance, a familiar parable dressed in neon: a wayward son of a Russian arms magnate marries a Las Vegas stripper on a drunken whim, sending his father’s desperate aides scrambling to undo the damage.
At its core, it’s a modern screwball setup with shades of fairytale, though one that never quite discovers the alchemy of either.
The film has been hailed in some quarters as a defiant tale of female agency — a portrait of a woman asserting her right to choose, to love, to exist on her own terms.
Yet its supposed radicalism feels overstated.
We’ve seen these margins before: the sex worker as symbol, the underclass as moral mirror. There’s little here to unsettle that pattern. And for all the talk of “how” rather than “what” — the craft over the content — one wonders if the formal flourishes conceal a certain narrative complacency.
The sex scenes, scattered liberally through the first act, promise psychological intimacy but deliver little beyond spectacle. The supposed love story, too, flickers without quite taking flame. “I think I love you,” he says, and the line lands not as confession but as concession.
There’s comedy in the chaos — the father’s henchmen, stumbling through damage control with surprising restraint — yet the film’s tonal balance wobbles. The absurdity is never absurd enough; the menace never menacing. One expects a fastball; what arrives is a slow, floating pitch.
And yet, for all its unevenness, Anora is held together by the magnetic pull of Mikey Madison.
Her face — elusive, shifting, unplaceable — is the film’s true miracle. In her eyes, one glimpses both the girl and the ghost of the American dream. She lends weight to moments that might otherwise drift away, carrying the film through its 139-minute sprawl with a grace the screenplay can’t quite match.
In the end, Anora is a film of gestures — some bold, some hesitant — that reaches for greatness but settles for charm. The camera loves her; the story, less so. ■
First published on Substack on Sep 28, 2025 (JST). Archived here as part of the Fabio Caipirinha permanent archive (published on this site: Oct 15, 2026). Images from the original are omitted here pending rights clearance. Original: https://fabiocaipirinha.substack.com/p/anora-a-fractured-fairy-tale-that
Cover image: The boardwalk at Brighton Beach, Brooklyn (CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons — source)
