‘Anora’ Is More Than a Brooklyn Cinderella Story
The New York Times
A sex worker in a romantic comedy isn’t new. How the Oscar-nominated film uses immigrant Brooklyn to subvert the genre? That’s different.
That location is everything turns out to be a truth nearly as relevant to romantic comedies as it is to real estate. If you cannot recall where two characters find each other or rekindle something long dormant, then the rest of the movie probably isn’t worth remembering.
There is nearly nothing forgettable about Sean Baker’s “Anora,” which picked up six Oscar nominations on Thursday, among them best picture and best director, a film virtually unsurpassed in its use of place and architecture to make the thematic arguments at its core.
The best romantic comedies deliver aggressively on geography, so much so that to ask where “Four Weddings and a Funeral” or “Love, Actually” or any Nora Ephron film is set, can seem like wanting to know which of the ancient empires belonged to Caesar. By now, even if you have not seen “Anora,” you have likely heard that it is a Brooklyn love story with Brooklyn drawn well beyond the parameters of bourgeois cliché.
We are many, many subway stops away from open shelving and tastefully patinated kitchen fixtures, away from people falling in love because they both dig Elizabeth Bishop or Wellfleet in the off-season.
Much of the film unfolds in Mill Basin, far from any bookstore or even a subway station, in a 14,000-square-foot house that sits on a point in Jamaica Bay and channels Las Vegas. Occupied by a 21-year-old gamer named Vanya, the aimless son of a Russian oligarch, it sits as a monument to the moral failings of the dubiously rich.
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, an unabashed fan of the Buffalo Bills, was perhaps never more popular than on Sunday in downtown Albany.
The 14th Amendment overturned the 1857 decision that denied citizenship to Black people. Scholars say President Trump’s proposal betrays that history.
The bishop asked President Trump publicly to “have mercy,” electrifying some liberal churchgoers in an era dominated by conservative versions of Christianity.
Even more than in his first term, President Trump has mounted a fundamental challenge to the norms and expectations of what a president can and should do.
The decision by federal prosecutors came at a time when President Trump was rolling back protections for transgender people.
Many commuters continue to oppose the new tolling program in New York City even as some drivers and bus riders are spending less time trapped in traffic.
Ten children talked about losing their homes, their schools and their neighborhoods in the Los Angeles fires. They discussed what they’re worried about and what’s cheering them up.
A state legislative committee has advanced a resolution asking that the power to regulate marriage be returned to the states.
The 17-member crew of the freighter, stuck a mile off the Buffalo shore, was never in serious danger, but its predicament drew news media attention and a crowd of curious onlookers.
President Trump is targeting people who have been living in the country under Biden immigration programs that shielded them from deportation and allowed them to work.
Locked out of power in Washington, the party is struggling to agree on a unified message of opposition. Some of its lawmakers are even telling Republicans they want to work together.
President Trump’s flurry of pardons this week sent a message to law enforcement: He will “back the blue” if they back him.
We want to know how workers are processing President Trump’s decision to end hiring practices meant to further diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal work force.
The arrest of three people at a seafood distribution warehouse in Newark has led to a heightened sense of alarm in the region.
Those who followed Biden-era guidelines are dismayed that the rules have changed. The app that helped them enter the country now may make them targets.
The fire at a Bronx apartment building on Jan. 10 was the third to break out in recent years at a property owned by Ved Parkash, who has been sued by tenants over building conditions.
The March for Life on Friday will bring together a movement invigorated by some early moves of the second Trump administration.
President Trump pardoned men who violently attacked police officers on Jan. 6 along with nearly 1,600 other people who had been charged in connection with the riot. But his grant of clemency did not erase the video evidence of their crimes.