I love this movie so much

Why so much hype?

Best movie ever!

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Awful, awful, awful... what a terrible excuse for a film, pathetic idea, poorly executed, terrible cast, the main guy is a Thor like douchebag of epic proportions! It's films like these that strike fear into my own heart when I think about directing a film, that I too may make something as God-awful and dreadful as this...If you've ever seen "Sorted" by Alex Jovy, you'll have an idea of how vapid and terrible this film is...If this is what happens with the "democratization" of filmmaking due to digital video cameras, I say bring back totalitarianism hence forth...Just burn the master tapes, forget it ever happened...

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.

An English language film shot in Denmark with a European cast, "All About Anna" is a co-production from Innocent Pictures and Zentropa Productions, best known in the United States for award-winning feature films like Lars von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark" and "Dogville" starring Nicole Kidman and James Caan. A slice-of-life mainstream romantic comedy with explicit lovemaking scenes, "All About Anna" is erotica made by women, for women and about women. Despite its graphic sexual content, It's not a shadowy dark night of the soul, as earlier, similar efforts like "The Devil In The Flesh" and "The Brown Bunny" strained to portray. It's simply entertaining and gently arousing, and aimed squarely at ladies and couples. Successful or not (and this critic feels, by and large, that it's a success) "All About Anna" represents a new genre: a fusing of the Northern European ambiance and pretty photography of that 60s classic "Elvira Madigan" (which this film more than slightly resembles, despite a much more upbeat ending), with a distinct feminist sensibility and startling, you-are- there hardcore photography.Danish director Jessica Nilsson (whose background includes both award-winning short films and cutting-edge music videos) brings a trendy indie sensibility to the film's visual style; the DIY-roots of Dogme95 and the association with Lars von Trier are combined to make "All About Anna" nothing so much as a lush tableaux of desire and abandon. The deceptively simple story focuses on young Anna (portrayed with an abundance of grace and style by mainstream Danish TV and music star Gry Bay), a young theatrical costume designer, who's focused on her career to the point of shunning romantic entanglements. But her concentration is shattered by a brief encounter with her ex- boyfriend Johan. As she begins to question her choices in life and love, Anna's dilemma ironically stems from her very determination to be an independent, self-actualized woman. While yearning for romance, she fears the pain it may entail - but even more, She fears loneliness even more. In a world where "no pain, no gain" seems to take on new meanings all the time, Anna is forced to make a life-defining decision. Loneliness is certainly one of the most universal subjects of European cinema, from Bergman's weighty meditations on faith to Truffaut's engaging slice-of-life comedies. Thankfully for everyone who dreads the pretentiousness that seems endemic to so much "serious" erotica, "All About Anna" cleaves to the latter camp. The much-ballyhooed unsimulated sex scenes emerge as nothing so much as a natural part of the storyline. This simplicity of the explicit content is heightened by the fact that the crew and actors utilized here obviously had no experience in making "adult" films. Indeed, porn fans seeking gynecological close-ups and standard-issue "money shots" should look elsewhere, as this is one sex movie that refuses to indulge sex movie clichés. In many instances, the camera operator's choice to shoot much of the lovemaking as a series of full body shots seems to actually work against the conventions customary to adult - but they speak volumes in terms of exteriorizing the inner lives of central characters.Beguiling Gry Bay (who, whether intentionally or not, is a dead ringer for the actress who played the titular character in "Elvira Madigan" nearly 40 years ago) is wholly believable both in and out of bed, by turns fetching, troubled, awkward, and sensitive (without ever being maudlin) in a performance that truly exists in a universe of its own, as if telegraphed from an alternate plane where "real movies" and "porn movies" are not mutually exclusive concepts. Eileen Daly happily lightens the mood in a winning supporting role, and French porn icon Ovidie is memorable in a lesbian liaison with Anna (although her Gothic, fetishistic look and personality would seem to suggest she'd be more at home in a Dario Argento erotic-horror opus than a quiet slice-of-life comedy like "All About Anna."A final influence on "All About Anna" appears to be American cult director Monte Hellman, who while having worked under-the-radar in the U.S. for over four decades, has long been heralded as a genius of the "quiet film" in both France and Denmark (He even recently renamed his production company Quiet Films, in a warm nod to his Danish fans). As the director of "Two-Lane Blacktop," and executive producer of "Buffalo 66" and Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs," Hellman has made a career out of crafting somber, slice-of-life dramas that focus on the individual's Search For Meaning. Imagine Hellman being given a free hand to shoot his own explicit adult film, with a wry, literate script and more than a few knowing references to "Elvira Madigan," and you've got this precocious film, a movie that beats all the X-rated filmmakers in the world to the punch at creating an "adult movie" that's not only also a "real movie" but a truly "good movie" as well. "All About Anna" is a love letter from Denmark, written in English, sent from the heart, a "Vinland Saga" for American audiences.

'Tagline: Not since Dogme95 has passion felt this real.' - 'To achieve a realism beyond even Dogme95'. The makers of this film clearly wrote this - if not it must be someone deprived of all his senses. First of all: to even attempt to put this movie in the same league as movies by Von Trier or Thomas Vinterberg is so misguided I do not know whether to laugh or cry. This is nothing more than a porn movie (a bad one at that)trying to create some aura of intellectualism about it - and much like Catherine Breillats Anatomy of Hell it fails miserably. There are hardcore scenes in this film, and it is even sold as porn in Denmark. Two of the actresses have made more than a few porn flicks... Lars Von Triers Idiots had hardcore porn in it too, for at split second - but that does not mean that there is any viable excuse to put it in - there is nothing in the way of motivation or storytelling that suggests that hardcore scenes could have a defining impact on a movie - it's put there as shock value only, which in this day and age is just daft.There is not a single capable actor in this film, Gry Bay is best known in Denmark for being willing to do most anything in front of a camera (this film more than proves that). The camera movement is as uninspired as the script, there seems to be no greater design to the angles chosen, and the editing seems rather random, and does not lend this movie anything in the way of flow. Generally the post production is shoddy at best and by the looks of it the proposed 'realism' and Dogme familiarity (SIC!)is the excuse for not making a decent product... The fact that Zentropa would have their name associated with this amazes me - even if they have produced porn before it was of a much higher standard... Because... It's just porn, mum