Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12600 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-01-29
• Formats: Anamorphic, Dolby, NTSC, Surround Sound
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 91 minutes

About the Actor
GRY BAY Anna is played by beautiful Danish film and music star GRY BAY, who received her big break playing one of the main characters in the German TV series Dr. Monika Lindt." More recently, she played a supporting part in the drama "Betonhjerter" and the female lead in the hip-hop comedy feature Slim Slam Slum (aka: Joystick Nation ), for which she also composed several songs. On stage, Gry Bay has sung and danced in such shows as West Side Story," Grease, Guys and Dolls, and Crazy For You." Additionally, as lead singer for Kid Creole, Gry Bay has toured in Denmark, England, Italy and the United States. In October 2003 readers of popular Danish magazine "M!" voted Gry Bay into spot 32 of the Top 100 Sexiest Girls in the World. In July 2004 readers of the Danish edition of FHM voted her into spot 97 at the Top 100 Sexiest Girls in the World. She has studied drama at the University of Copenhagen, where she wrote a dissertation on the use of body language in dramatic arts, graduating at the MA level.

About the Director
JESSICA NILSSON Director and screenwriter Jessica Nilsson was born in Sweden in 1965, but has lived in Denmark since 1988, where she studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and graduated from the Danish Film School. Recently, Jessica Nilsson has received critical acclaim for "Till Death Do Us Part" and other outstanding radio plays written and directed for Denmark's Radio. In 2005, the Danish Association of the Blind awarded her its Radioplay Award for her erotic radio play "Burning Desire", produced by Denmark's Radio. In the awards program, the Jury wrote: "Jessica Nilsson is a woman not afraid of going off the rails to follow a story to its extreme consequence. She wholeheartedly relates to dangerous subjects and genres which nice girls normally leave to others." She is however best known for her unique music videos and award winning short films such as "The Sausage", which won First Prize at the 1998 Oslo Short Film Festival, and "Spotless", which was in competition at Sundance 2001 and won the Special Jury Prize at Flickerfest 2001 in Sydney. At Odense Film Festival 2000, in connection with her short film "Spotless", she received the Danish Directors' Prize of Merit.

Customer Reviews

One From The Heart, One Of A Kind
This movie received a five-star, Editor's Choice review in the April, 2008 AVN, and it's easy to see why. An English language film shot in Denmark with a European cast, "All About Anna" is a one-of-a-kind 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. - Victor Manzon

...something for the ladies...
I must say I did not enjoy this movie that much...this is a great idea badly executed...this is meant to be an erotic movie with a good storyline but it falls short on all counts...as some reviews have indicated the acting is bad, the dialogue, diction, appalling...as for the sex scenes, 'real' or 'simulated' they 'sucked' (pun intended)...the sex scenes betray the fact this movie was directed and shot by a woman probably a so called modern feminist who feels most mainstream movies are filled with too much femi-nudity and wanted to change that...this movie has too much male nudity from unnecessary male genital close-ups, explicit male masturbation in the shower, fellatio all which I beleive will be off putting to most male viewers and no female genitalia close ups at all, breasts not included... so this is something for the ladies who would like to see alot of male nudity...

Weak story, weak drama
PROS: Gry Bay's (plays Anna) natural beauty, and good effort at trying to make this weak film work.
CONS: Producer's Cut. This had lots of voice-overs, most of which treated the audience as dummies, explaining to viewers mostly what is already seen on screen. Rather than just play out the important plot points through drama, these are explained to audience through VO. The film spends too much time trying to develop characters through VO. The pacing was slow. The drama/story was poorly written and lacked tension, which made me feel little empathy for the characters. The film has mediocre elements of both hardcore and drama. One dimensional portrayals of: Anna's boozy, slut roommate Camilla (Eileen Daly), Frank, and Anna's meat head boyfriend Johan (Mark Stevens). Johan (my co-screener said he resembles Owen Wilson on steroids), seems wooden, despite his so-called "passion" for Anna. Another element that makes this film feel phony is that the lead Bay speaks in halting English, English as a second language. The story takes place in Denmark! The film was billed as an art house film, having real sex scenes. Did the actors really have to perform sex? Perhaps, they should have just faked the sex scenes because from the obscured camera angles, the viewer can't tell the actors are really having sex. "Faking it" would have saved the production team time, money and risk of STDs.
Director's cut on 2nd DVD is presented to viewers in a fast forward mode. One cannot watch the film this way, so what is the point of including it?
Conclusion: Don't believe all the press hype over this film. I'm shocked that such a poor film was made by filmmaker Lars Von Trier's production company. There are better erotic films out there which do not include "real sex" such as 9 1/2 weeks, The Secretary, Brokeback Mountain, and Betty Blue, etc. These have much better production value and story.