REVIEW. ANORA: Cinderella Meets Pretty Woman? Da Nyet Naveral.

About thirty minutes into Anora, my husband leaned over and whispered, "This is the movie that won the Palme d'Or (at this year's Cannes Film Festival)?" I nodded. Truth is, I was wondering the same thing myself. Is this an Oscar-worthy film bolstered by a breakthrough performance? Da Nyet Naveral. Yes? No? Maybe?

I must admit I was intrigued when I first saw the trailer for Anora a few months ago. The preview pulsated with a kind of frenetic joie de vivre, quick cuts and kinetic, blurred camera shots that provided a glimpse into the world of a stripper named Ani (Mickey Madison), short for Anora, and the whirlwind romance she is swept into. Since then, I've read a number of articles about the film, including many that consistently praise the "star-making" performance by Madison in the title role, so I was both excited about and curious to see what writer-director Sean Baker had created.

The movie, already a darling with the film festival crowd, promised an exhilarating, if gritty, revision of Cinderella for a new generation. "Pretty Woman" for the 21st century," one reviewer wrote. In fact, Anora's premise is surprisingly similar to the 1990 box office blockbuster that put Julia Roberts on Hollywood's A-list and gave Richard Gere a more approachable on-screen presence. In short, New Jersey stripper and part-time escort Ani meets Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch, and agrees to be his girlfriend for a week. They haggle over the price in much the same way Vivian and Edward (Roberts and Gere) did over thirty years ago (am I sensing a sort of cinematic plagiarism?), but the results are nowhere near those of Garry Marshall's now iconic (or, for some of you, perennially irritating) rom-com.

No sooner do Ani and Ivan hook up than he proposes marriage, and the two head to Vegas with his friends for a quickie ceremony followed by a week of non-stop partying, drug use and sex. When they return to his father's opulent mansion on the Jersey shore, Ivan's family learns of his impromptu marriage and promptly send an entourage of henchmen to undo the damage.

Here the movie turns violently slapstick, as Ivan runs away, leaving Ani to fend for herself as his father's goons try to subdue her. She's feisty, ferocious and fearless defending herself, though it's clear her efforts are probably wasted, as she's up against the kind of wealth and power not unlike the Corleone's. You can easily figure out where the movie is going, and Baker doesn't provide any narrative surprises. He may be one of the few screenwriters who uses "fuck" - and its many variations - more often than Quentin Tarantino, though I would argue the latter is much more inventive with his repeated use of my favorite curse word.

In any case, the last hour and a half of the film trudges on as Ani tries desperately to convince lame brain dilettante Ivan that he loves her, while his family plots to break them up and restore the family's honor. No son of theirs would stoop to marrying a prostitute, despite Ani's protestations - and her command of the Russian language - that she is not a hooker, but an exotic dancer. I still wonder why it is that male screenwriters can't bring themselves to create female sex workers at face value. Instead, they always need to soften the characters so that redemption or suffering seems heightened, as though the audience is incapable of feeling empathy toward a woman unless she has some compensatory virtue.

When I saw the film, many audience members found the pratfalls and missed punches (Ani lands most of them) funny, and they are definitely bawdy. I was mostly bored, though, as some of these scenes extended beyond their worth. Despite Madison's breakout performance: her expressive face and ability to push Ani's emerging selfhood, revealing layer upon layer of vulnerability, I couldn't get interested in her character or the story. Ani and Ivan each are vapid in their own way: she's looking for her fairy tale (and seems to feel entitled to it), and he's a poor little rich kid obsessed with playing video games (he can't even take the controller out of his hand while they fuck).

I'm sure Baker was making a statement about cultural and class differences, the elusive nature of the American dream, and the futility of romance in the modern age. I couldn't get caught up in the dramedy, even though I wanted to connect to Ani's spunky determination, and the defiant way she fought for her identity. For me, the movie was mostly loud, (and not just the music - Ani's screaming matched any of the disco vibrations and party noise), self-indulgent and ultimately predictable. Maybe it's because I never participated in the drug use that permeated the post-counterculture generation I grew up in, but scenes of excessive snorting and puffing don't do anything for me. And sleazy sex scenes that come close to the kind you'd find in a porno flick don't draw me in either. Ivan has all the finesse of the Energizer Bunny, and not nearly its endurance. I get what Baker was trying to do. I just couldn't relate.

Where Pretty Woman had the kind of fairy tale ending that once elicited genuine wrath from film critic Pauline Kael (she groused that the movie was nothing more than a tale of misguided misogyny and a crass, sexist paean to capitalism), Anora dismisses the notion of finding happiness of any kind (money or not) and, instead, takes us down a bleak path toward disillusionment. By the time we get to the final scene, I didn't need the New Jersey snow to feel the chilliness of the bleak world Ani has inhabited.

Baker has suggested his inspiration for the movie's "gut-punch" ending was Federico Fellini's Nights of the Cabiria, which ends with a shot of the title character, a prostitute named Cabiria, tear-stricken after learning her would-be lover has exploited her. We don't see Ani's face at the end, it is hidden from view, perhaps adding ambiguity to her fate, but it is clear she is devastated. Her encounter with Ivan has brought anything but a storybook ending.

So it is with romance in a post-modern, MAGA world. The rich exploit the poor. Woman are objectified. Fairy tales, especially those with a "Cinder-fucking-rella" (another stolen term from Pretty Woman), don't exist. Guess the popular, sometimes whimsical, Russian phrase for not really being sure about the world sums up my impression of Anora: Da Nyet Naveral.