All About Anna (2005)

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

So, I have to write at least 1000 words. Well, here it goes: Contains a little spoiler!Minute 6 into the movie and I decided to fast forward to the "good" scenes. Guy: "Mom, I have a friend staying over and she has a headache. What do I do?" ... "Oh, give her an aspirin?"Who wrote this stuff? What grown man doesn't know what to take for a headache and has to call his mom? Dumb! Then it jumps to a sex scene. All one minute and a half of it!!! Because that is all the guy lasts! Must've been the paint fumes (they were painting the apartment). Next, after the whole super hot mini-scene, the chick goes to the door naked, opens it and some dudes come in while she is "busy" getting dressed. Guess who's one of the dudes?! Her old flame that dumped her, now moving in! At this point, I am like the chick from "Legally blonde". As if! After all these years, how did the old flame know her NEW address?Yea, real life stuff. Very credible! Stupid beyond belief! Waste of time folks. Whoever wrote that the main actress is a good actress, must've been on some good stuff. You will be better off watching some real porn with way more action and way better acting!

Oh, how much I wanted to like this movie ! For those of you familiar with my rantings, you already know my interest in movies that fuse the art-house approach with the grind house sensibility, just my fancy way of saying I like flicks that try to incorporate explicit sex into a mainstream narrative. In recent memory, movies like John Cameron Mitchell's magnificent SHORTBUS or the French BAISE-MOI did a splendid job thereof. Some ten years ago, much ballyhoo was made of Lars Von Trier's Zentropa production unit generating an off-shoot called Puzzy Power dedicated to creating "female-friendly" porn. Something of a Von Trier trademark, his attention span rapidly wore out and three well received efforts - CONSTANCE, PINK PRISON and the gay feature HOTMEN, COOLBOYZ - later, the off-shoot (temporarily ?) halted its production endeavors, with Nicolas Barbano's frugal Innocent Pictures attempting to pick up the slack. ALL ABOUT ANNA, made with means far too modest for its ambitions, in addition to being plagued by myriad unforeseen circumstances such as the sudden Scandinavian backlash against sexually explicit representation, represents its inaugural effort.Proudly proclaiming itself "a HeartCore feature" (I couldn't make this up !), ANNA was the feature directorial debut of Jessica Nilsson, a Danish film school graduate gathering some acclaim for her short film work including the award-winning THE SAUSAGE, which probably landed her this gig if the title's anything to go by ! Rumor has it, Nilsson went against contract and delivered a largely soft-core edit of the film, which was then attempted to salvage by the producers with additional (and not just explicit) footage to make good on their publicity promise of anything that could pass for "women's erotica". Actually, it's a bit more than a rumor as Nilsson's virtually unwatchable "director's cut" on the second disc of an overreaching 3 disc DVD edition clearly testifies. So you kind of have to approach the movie as a rescue mission and, admittedly, as such (if, sadly, only as such) it's not too bad.In an effort to appeal to a demographic of upwardly mobile professional women, screenwriters Anya Aims and Loretta Fabiana focus on the supposedly recognizable problems of a theater costume designer (seeming more like one of those typically glamorous skin flick professions that don't require a character to spend too much time actually working at them) trying to get her love life back in order. The eponymous Anna is played by apparently popular Danish singer/presenter Gry Bay, whose helpfully included biography mentions she was one of Kid Creole's Coconuts ! Well, she certainly sports a lovely pair of those strapped to her chest. Kidding aside, she's not too bad an actress, especially considering how the entire cast was left floundering under Nilsson's helpless direction. Anna thought she had met her ideal soul mate in gorgeous blond Nordic adventurer Johan (British, if South Africa born Mark Stevens, whose rippling muscles were employed to comic effect playing the bungee-jumping Casanova in the endearing Mandy Moore vehicle CHASING LIBERTY) who just up and left on his ship one day, leaving his lady love in the lurch.Five years later, Anna has moved to a new apartment with fun-loving friend Camilla (Brit video label Redeption model Eileen Daley from RAZOR BLADE SMILE fame), the latter's presence largely a ruse to keep pushy new boyfriend Frank (Thomas Raft, struggling manfully with English dialog he so obviously doesn't master) at a safe emotional distance. In a "what are the odds" coincidence, one of the moving guys turns out to be long-lost Johan who now wants her back all of a sudden. Before the blissful fade-out however, not much of a spoiler in my mentioning it, the tiresome plot throws the star-crossed lovers several curve-balls such as Anna's losing Johan's phone number and the offer to design costumes in Paris (allowing her to call home sitting beside the Eiffel Tower !) by a terrible French actor trying to get into her pants, played by the not so Continental yet equally dreadful Morten Schelbech, biographically described as "a Shakespearean actor with a rich theatrical background", yeah right ! At least, the French episode yields a warm miniature from the always dependable Ovidie - the only real porno person in the cast, ironically delivering the most accomplished acting of the lot - as an actress with Sapphic leanings, initiating our often ridiculously headstrong heroine into a gratuitous yet pleasing woman to woman. Too bad the frequently clumsy DV camera work manages to make even the City of Lights look cheap and tawdry, shaping up too late in the proceedings by the time the big romantic finale comes around.Meanwhile, Camilla is making a move on Johan, whom she met at the gym and decided to bring into Anna's apartment during her absence, all the while not knowing who he is ! Are you still buying this crap ? Thank God, Daly ends up providing the flick's most explicit encounter with ample attention lavished upon Stevens' admittedly awesome physique and the one cum shot, accidentally hitting Camilla in the eye ! At moments like these, ANNA actually works as porn, something it's trying (or not, I have lost track...) to be in the first place. Somewhat surprising for someone with little background in the field, Daley exhibits few qualms about performing on camera, bless her. Equally out of left field is her lively, only occasionally over-animated acting performance, effectively rendering Camilla a far more likable character than dreary, all too easily offended Anna. The actresses generally get off best here (pun intended), with Bay struggling hard to keep the audience on her side, inexplicably thwarted by writing seemingly intended to achieve the opposite. For a good laugh, just listen to the lyrics to the "bird song" (trust me, you will know it when you hear it !) by M. Maurice Hawkesworth, who penned all those silly tunes second language chart toppers Ace of Base used to infest the air waves with.

First things first: There are only few notable merits regarding this particular "experiment" but it is certainly not completely devoid of them: for one, the director attempted to create a counterbalance to what is universally considered as the problem of the mainstream pornographic motion picture, be it soft core or hardcore: the presentation of a mechanical, emotionless, unengaging, uninspiring and ultimately tiresome repetition of sexual acts aiming solely at the physical arousal of its viewers and probably achieving that in the first few minutes; rendering the rest of it as a distasteful and vicious circle.The producers misleadingly labelled it as "pornography for women", perhaps acknowledging the fact that the scenes are not explicit enough to present it as the hardcore pornography they would have liked. And a large portion of it probably isn't as it seemingly provides to bridge the gap between hardcore pornography and erotica and create a film that would ultimately excite the senses in both a physical but also an emotional level as well as provide an engaging storyline that would justify the sex scenes as a meaningful entity of the whole. If that was the initial intention, as the producers of AAA claim it to be, it certainly wasn't given justice by the end result - in spite of the fact that that premise and intention was probably there in the offing. This is less evident in the actual producer's cut or even the director's cut of the film but a lot more evident from the outtakes of several of the sex scenes included on the DVD: they are long, varied, passionate, well rehearsed and acted and emotionally engaging; while the camera work is such that makes them appear both sensual and realistic. They're shot in a way as to provide a clue to the fact that most of the sex in the film is unsimulated; but with a more cryptic, more erotic vision, contradictory to the average porn sensibility.It's not surprising that this film is described as a collaboration of a major mainstream pornographic production company and Lars Von Trier's Zentropa. But this dichotomy ultimately leans towards the side of the porn producers as they seem to win over the intentions of the director and probably some of the actors themselves who probably had a more concrete idea of what they wanted to achieve or rather what they wanted to avoid. As a consequence, although there is the actual "philosophy" of supporting the making of such a film - the existence of a "manifesto" in the like of Dogme95 that states the preferable and the avoidable - it all seems to escalate and ultimately fly in the face of that it was purported to be. Crudely put, there are facial ejaculation scenes; there is "cheap" music that is supposed to "complement" the sex - but in fact it is totally out of place. There is also a sorry excuse of a script and what is supposed to be a storyline but it is all done so poorly that can hardly conceal the fact that there isn't one. And most importantly: there is bad acting - which is quite surprising given the fact that some of the actors are allegedly unfamiliar with the territory and are earning their living from participating in more socially acceptable genres of film-making. However, judging by the actual acting in the film - give and take the sex scenes - either the levels of acting in Denmark are really low at the moment or these particular actors are hardly adequate in their chosen field. All the more so when particular emphasis is given towards presenting a story: the bad acting and lack of a meaningful plot to back things up create an even bigger problematic. Then there's the attempt to dress it all up with the addition of a supporting cast that comes straight from hardcore pornography; acting in more explicit and conventional scenes and overall giving a very uneven feel to the whole endeavour. Why add more characters and more scenes and "embroider" the film with what was supposed to be trying to avoid in the first place? Let alone make things even more complicated and disjointed when the leading characters themselves are so underdeveloped? It's therefore obvious that the initial intention was not shared by all of the people involved and consequently not sustained throughout the project - which is a shame and perhaps a wasted opportunity? The end product ultimately reflects those dichotomies: It's half-baked to such an extent that would equally disappoint both the fans of porn - because of the lack of enough explicit scenes they are accustomed to watching - but also those viewers who, deluded by the producers' promises, were prepared for watching something entirely different. It is different but not different enough to dissociate it from mainstream porn in terms of overall sensibility or production values. Finally some suggestions in case somebody else attempts something similar: give the director more artistic freedom to shoot what they like and present the film the way they like. Give them more time to work on it and have a more concrete picture as to what they aim to achieve. Lose the voice-over, especially when the script is so poor; get a decent scriptwriter to write a meaningful story, not an excuse for bad acting. Or perhaps simply give Lars Von Trier himself the camera and step aside...

Contains Spoilers, but the plot is not that deep so it shouldn't bother you much.The film is hard to categorize. It starts out being a mainstream film with a lot of sex and ends up more like a hard or soft core pornographic film. The actors and actresses are not the typical blue movie film crew. They act like normal people while having sex and none of them seem to have been physically enhanced, The star, Gry Bay, is a true natural beauty - not at all like the typical "silicone bombshell" that plays in the blue movies. The film as a whole has more serious plot and character elements than pornography, but not enough to convince me that it is a serious film.The movie begins very well. Anna is left for 5 years by the love of her life, Johan, because he has a wanderlust. She morns him for a while then decides to just "have fun" with multiple partners and no commitments. Eventually, Frank comes along, who cares for her. Even though he isn't the great love that Johan was, Anna likes being cared for, so they move in together. Then, Johan shows up as one of their movers. A multitude of conflicting feeling come in on Anna and Gry Bay is excellent at conveying them quickly and effectively. Also at this time Anna takes on a female roomer, Carmella. Johan knows he made a big mistake but doesn't know how to remedy it, so he makes excuses to see Anna again. These are some of the best scenes in the movie. In one very charming scene, he brings her a shoe that may have gotten lost in the move. Like a fairy tale he tries to put it on her foot to see if it fits. In another wonderful scene where sex becomes comedy, Anna and Johan start to make love, while Frank is asleep in the next room. Frank wakes up and they abruptly stop, just managing to get dressed with Johan leaving just ahead of Frank stumbling sleepily into the room. Up to about the half way mark, the film is quite successful. The characters ring true and the plot is interesting - dramatic with touches of humor. The sex scenes make sense in the context of the film and move the plot and character development forward. But after this point, everything changes. It is as though a different director and writer took over. Suddenly the plot seems to be there only to introduce the next sex scene. Character development is forgotten and the thinest pretext is taken as a motive for everyone to get undressed. What started out as a mainstream film integrating strong sexual elements, now becomes pornography trying unsuccessfully to cross over into mainstream.I won't bore you with the rest of the plot, if you can call it that. Basically we all know Anna and Johan will get back together, but first the plot has to be manipulated so that we can give some sex scenes to the roommate, to an different couple, to Anna with other people, and lets not forget the obligatory lesbian scene to say nothing of the big sex scene when they are finally reunited. It is a film that is difficult to categorize. I haven't seen a lot of pornography, but what I have seen ended up being mostly boring. This is better than that. But it is worse than a film like "Lie With Me" which really does integrate strong sex, characters and plot. All About Anna lives it in that frustrating limbo of "almost films" that whet your appetite but never satisfy it. There are some positives, however. The first half is good. Watching Gry Bay either clothed or unclothed is worthwhile in itself. She is a beautiful woman and an accomplished actress. She could have taken this movie somewhere if the script had been better. She deserved a better film.