Unable to sleep late at night, I got one of my brother's old VHS tapes and played something called Anna. This 20-year old movie made by European artists in America for the independent film company Vestron Pictures starred Sally Kirkland in the Oscar-nominated title role as a former Czech movie actress who's now struggling off-Broadway as an understudy for seven roles in an art-house play. Robert Fields plays her writer boyfriend Daniel, Steven Gilborn-who I remember as Kevin Arnold's math teacher in "The Wonder Years"-her ex-husband Tonda, and supermodel Paulina Porizkova is Krystyna-Anna's protégé. When I read the end credits, at the last name on the cast list was Francis' daughter Sofia Coppola as Noodle though I don't remember her or the character. Anyway, this movie began amusingly enough with Anna suffering an audition reciting a nursery rhyme while standing on one leg and shouting but as the film went on we feel for her as she suffers a breakdown after Krystyna steals Anna's life story for her own as she-with Anna's help-rises in stardom. Kirkland deserved her only Academy Award nomination that I felt was even better than the one who actually won in the Best Actress category that year: Cher in Moonstruck. Porizkova was also pretty good for her ingénue role as we see her and Kirkland initially bond. Since Vestron no longer exists, this movie may be difficult to find now but Anna is definitely worth a look.

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.

"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).

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