Bobby (Willem Dafoe) kindly shooing the Sandhill Cranes from the driveway so they don’t get hurt (insert smiling teary-eyed emoji).
I’m focusing on that one scene that sums up just the kind of guy Bobby is because the rest of the film feels like a lump in my throat. (As a child—everything feels magical and whimsical until one day it’s not.)
This was a really difficult watch—I’m still at a loss for words. Episode 3 left me shaking.
It just goes to show you how even parents who are doing everything right can still lose a child who has been exposed to and radicalized by harmful content and ideologies through the internet and by their peers.
Adolescence is a vulnerable developmental time window where an individual’s sense self begins taking form. Pre-teens and teens look to their peers and role models…
I can see Sean Baker pitching this film like— “Picture this: What if Pretty Woman had gone sideways?”
But here’s the recipe:
Anora basically wove elements of Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (my all time favorite dark comedy) with an inverse Coming to America—and then added tits, lap dances, Russian stereotypes and hired goons ad libitum. Its secret ingredient? It took Almodovarian melodrama and adapted it to a US-ian audience.
I can’t decide yet whether I liked this film…
Andrew Dominik really took the beautiful and talented Ana de Armas and abused her like a Barbie doll the way an emotionally disturbed 5 year old would: tearing off her clothes, smashing her against the wall, repeatedly mashing her face and bum into random Kens's faces and crotches, and scribbling all over her in red sharpie marker before popping her head off.
