Anora (Theaters)
Sean Baker wins Cannes' top prize with this wholly original tale featuring a star-making turn from Mikey Madison
What’s it about? Anora, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.
Who it’s for? Fans of Sean Baker’s films (The Florida Project, Red Rocket, Tangerine), Mikey Madison admirers, if you enjoy unpredictable and genre-bending films, fans of gritty NYC stories, those who appreciate character-driven narratives
Who should avoid? Those uncomfortable with explicit content, if you dislike tonal shifts, fans of traditional romances, if you dislike chaotic films
Watch if you like: Pretty Woman, After Hours, Red Rocket, Nights of Cabiria
News and Notes:
Premiered at Cannes 2024
Releasing in NYC and LA today
Schmear’s Verdict: Sean Baker's seriocomic NYC fairy tale Anora seamlessly blends romance, humor, and chaos into a captivating and genre-defying cinematic experience that also heralds the birth of a star in Mikey Madison.
Sean Baker’s seriocomic fairy tale Anora is so original and sui generis that it defies easy categorization. Light on its feet, it dances through its plot, shifting from one kind of movie to another in such an organic way that you never feel tonal whiplash.
The film opens confidently at a New York City strip club as we meet our protagonist Ani (Mikey Madison) as she dances to a Robin Schulz remix of Take That’s “Greatest Day.” We’re immediately off to the races for a wild ride that will blend sex, love, capitalism, class, humor, and heartbreak.
Due to her background, our spunky Brighton Beach native is utilized by her boss to court Russian clients, and she thusly meets young Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), a 21-year-old flâneur with boat-loads of cash, sex-drive, and energy in equal measure. He purchases her time and service.
Eydelshteyn is adorable, funny, and charming, like a young Timothee Chalamet. So likable that its easy to overlook what a completely immature imbecile he is. We never learn who Vanya’s dad is, who provides him with his palatial home, but directing Anora to “google him” tells us everything we need to know.
These crazy kids embark on a whirlwind romance that Baker makes feel fun, as if we were right there with them. They take a PJ to Vegas, gambling and sipping champagne all the while, and in their drunken and ecstatic lust, Vanya and Anora decide to get married. Up to this point, nothing suggests Anora is anything but a sex positive Cinderella-seeming rom-com, but we know what our naive protagonists don’t: that storm clouds are on the horizon.
Sure enough, Vanya’s marriage to an escort sends shockwaves through his Russian community, reverberations that make their way up to his lordly off-screen father, who in turn sends Armenian goons to annul the marriage. Here, Anora shifts again into a hysterical and chaotic screwball farce by way of the Coen Brothers.
Here is when Mikey Madison really comes into her own and the character of Anora takes flight. Up to this point, she’s inhabited the role with a brassy Brooklyn accent and a sassy attitude, but around this point, she completely owns it, letting rip a panoply of expletives that would make sea-hardened sailors blush. She showed off her pipes as a screaming Manson girl in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. She utilizes them again to great effect here.
Anora morphs once again into a “one crazy night” in New York caper as Anora and the hoods scour Coney Island for Vanya, who bolted when they came to collect him. This stretch calls to mind 25th Hour, The Safdie Brothers, Scorsese’s After Hours, and even The Warriors—NYC classics that capture the city’s kinetic, alluring energy and the dark, random sense of possibility inherent in any given night.
So much of what I watched at Cannes prioritized formalist flair over natural, story-based camerawork. As a director, Baker is confident and assured, but never showy. Each of his filmmaking decisions is first and foremost in service of character. Keep an eye out for the way he keeps stoic goon Igor (a wonderful Yuriy Borisov) within the frame of later scenes, even if he has no dialogue. Behold a tracking shot of Vanya being dragged violently out of a strip club. See the way Anora walks past the world-famous Cyclone rollercoaster, in lockstep with the gangsters—more native to their world than Vanya’s opulence.
Baker cites Hal Ashby as a major influence, and I see it—definitely visually, but also in terms of the trust he seems to have with his performers, especially Madison. For all of Anora’s brazenness, she’s an extremely vulnerable character, subject to the unjust vicissitudes of sex work. For Madison, this means a ton of nudity and subjection to compromising situations. She impressively takes that challenge head-on, no doubt helped along by how principled and consistent Baker must be on the page, on set, and behind the camera.
The final tonal change is one of sobering heartbreak and surprising longing, the aching kind you might see in a Wong Kar-Wai film. This experience—all its fun and its shame—finally hits Anora like a ton of bricks. Just as we, the audience, knew the romance was doomed, so too do we know at the end, despite her exhaustion, that Anora will be more than just okay. Over the past 2 hours and 20 minutes, her mettle, heart, and hopefulness have been well-proven.
