Anna

"Anna" is the movie with perhaps the greatest disparity between my opinion and everyone else's, so seems appropriate for my first comment on IMDb.

Anna (Sally Kirkland) was a legendary actress in Czechoslovakia, and in New York suffers a career in shabby productions with avant garde or artistic pretensions. Krystyna (Paulina Porizkova), an immigrant from Czechoslovakia with acting aspirations, spends her first days on the streets of New York searching for Anna, fainting from hunger virtually on her doorstep. Anna takes her in, and they become intimate friends.

Porizkova's Krystyna is as compellingly ambitious and wily as any of Werner Herzog's roles -- and this in an area calling for a subtler social sense. Krystyna seems not to be Anna's daughter, given up for adoption at a young age. But the malleability of memory -- Krystyna's in an obvious way, though perhaps also Anna's -- is treated more interestingly than in some of Agnieszka Holland's better known movies, such as "Olivier, Olivier" or "Europa, Europa." Almost as interesting as some real life cases: The erstwhile mental illness "fugue" comes to mind (see, for example, the Times Literary Supplement, 16 July 1999; as this is a movie database, I'll also point to "Paris, Texas" for a portrayal of the phenomenon). So does the case of Benjamin Wilkomirski. I could but won't extend this list.

On the negative side, the description of Jewish life in New York is a mixture of inappropriately projected Christian norms and condescension (maybe due to unfamiliarity, or laziness of imagination).

I found it quite absorbing. I haven't seen it since 1988 or so. I remember Paulina Porizkova was a pretty famous model back then, pre-supermodel days. I was deeply struck by the relationship between the two woman. Youth and middle-age. The incredible losses of not only youth, but of possibility and love are touched on in a way very rarely seen in movies. Especially from a woman's point of view. The mentoring of the younger woman and then the incredible sense of loss when she is whisked away by public reaction to her beauty and then actually takes on the painful past of her mentor, in a way steals it is incredibly moving. You end up feeling for Kirkland's character because she seems to have greater depth than the younger woman, but at the same time is that just the result of age and circumstance? And the poignant relationship to her lost image and the contacts and opportunity that her youthful beauty once promised her. Now she is alone and forgotten in a foreign land. It is pretty incredible.

This film is all about Kirkland's performance, which is still one of the best performances I've ever seen on film. She was nominated for an Oscar but lost to Geraldine Page for The Trip to Bountiful in one of those sympathy votes going to the lesser performance things (Page had been nominated without winning something like eight times prior, so a lot of people in the Academy probably thought it was time to give her something). Porizkova does pretty well for her debut performance, but then again she was pretty much playing herself as an eastern European beauty who is discovered and becomes a model.

But I'm writing this review solely to give Kirkland the praise she deserves for her terrific performance.

what makes this film worth watching, other than the unrecognized talent of sally kirkland, is the authentic feel of lower new york and the off broadway scene. the ending is not what i expected and i appreciate the fact that someone knows how to write an ending that makes you think about what you just saw and feel somehting for the characters that you have to think about before you decide exactly what you felt. i saw this film several years after its release and i think if i could vote the oscars now i would vote it in lead actress, screenplay and cinemotagraphy. an excellent film proving creativity not money is what makes something worth watching on screen. 3 and 1/2 stars. timelessly moving

Once a film star in Czechoslovakia, a middle-aged Anna has to settle for the humiliation of an off-Broadway understudy role only to watch her inexperienced and recently emigrated young protege (Porizkova) find sudden success in Hollywood. There is probably only one reason to watch "Anna", a clumsy slice-of-miserable-life story, and that is Kirkland's wonderful portrayal of her courageously vulnerable character. Likely to have only narrow appeal, "Anna" is a Czech flavored indie worth a look and a must see for Kirkland fans. C+