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Wonderfully offbeat film!

An action-packed slog

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

A once famous Czech actress, fallen on hard times since emigrating to New York City in 1968, finds the strain of maintaining her professional integrity beginning to take its toll after too many humiliating off-Broadway auditions. But unlike its title character the film of the same name is (thankfully) far less neurotic, presenting a fresh mix of otherwise familiar narrative elements. It's part show-biz satire, part fish-out-of-water drama, and in large part a cross cultural variation of 'A Star Is Born', with the melancholy Anna sheltering an impoverished but attractive peasant girl from the Old Country (Paulina Porizkova) whose unexpected (and unsolicited) success begins to eclipse her mentor's own fading career. The relationship is given added resonance in the young protégé's naive ignorance of Prague Spring, giving the domestic show business story a richer European perspective, which no doubt came natural to screenwriter Agnieszka Holland, an accomplished filmmaker herself. But after having created such memorable characters (rewarded in the title role by a performance to match, from unlikely Oscar nominee Sally Kirkland) it's too bad Holland's script then had to settle for such an abrupt and artificial ending.

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.

ANNA is a very uneven film BUT Sally Kirkland's performance is not. Shame that more people didnt see if they did she might have gotten an Academy Award. Fortunately she was nominated.

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+