Anna [Luc Besson, 2019]:
Writer and director Luc Besson probably intended for the film's peculiar structure to draw comparisons to a matryoshka doll (the doll being the symbol with which his title character, Anna, a Russian criminal, turned spy, turned super model, is apparently linked.) So what we have is a series of nested flashbacks being presented as if they're different, hidden layers; each one intended to strip away the façade of Anna's differing personas to take us closer to the character's emotional truth.
It's an interesting approach, in theory, and especially for a film that deals with themes of espionage, role playing and appearance as deception. However, in practice, such intelligence is beyond Besson's capabilities, as he delivers a story that is less complex than convoluted. The structure, which cuts back and forth between 1985, 1987, 1989 and 1990 (and often flashing backwards and forwards three months at a time between scenes) is genuinely alienating, exposing the contrivances of Besson's plotting and the transparency of his narrative machinations. It also makes the relationships between his characters vague and unknowable, reducing every major plot point to a nonsensical twist. It's a fatal flaw in a film that already had a lot going against it.
Besson has been without interest for me for over a decade now, and Anna does little to reverse the downward trajectory that his career has taken. It's a joyless, by-the-numbers production that seems self-consciously manufactured to recall the filmmakers former glories, specifically La Femme Nikita (1990) and Léon (aka The Professional) (1994). Worse, it finds Besson pushing an incredibly sexist "female empowerment" narrative, where once again a wayward young woman is picked from the slums, rescued by an older male mentor (who also becomes her insatiable lover), and is then stripped (literally) of her identity and sense of self in order to be rebuilt as an image of the man's ideal.
Anna [Luc Besson, 2019]:
Thirty years ago, this same narrative was enough to see Besson tagged as a feminist filmmaker, but such a reputation now seems entirely ludicrous when we compare this tired scenario against the numerous sexual assault allegations that have since been made against the filmmaker, and how the nature of these allegations seem to mirror this male savior/male mogul ideal that he often endorses through his work. Anna might use her chess smarts to play the KGB and the CIA off against each other, but she does so by bed-hopping between the two factions and letting Besson's camera sneaks shots up her skirt.
As Anna, former model Sasha Luss deserved a better film. She delivers a strong performance, even with such weak material, and throws herself into the film's action sequences with great skill and enthusiasm. Besson was once a master of action cinema, but here he delivers mostly scenes of disorganized carnage or moments of self-parody.
Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: Taxi: Notes on 'the Auteur' [12 September 2020] Luc Besson: An Introduction? [26 September 2019], Possible Worlds: A look at the science-fiction films of Luc Besson [20 October 2019],
