Words by MATT MAYTUM
You know the film in which the charming, rich man pays a sex worker to spend the week with him and they fall in love? Well, Anora isn’t Pretty Woman. If you’ve seen any of writer/director Sean Baker’s previous movies – the best known being Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021) – you’ll know not to expect anything quite so conventional. Like those earlier works, Anora is another rounded, grounded look at a marginalised community in the US, but its scale and sweep marks it out as Baker’s boldest gambit yet, and amplifies its crossover appeal. Buoyed by winning the Palme d’Or (the highest accolade at the Cannes Film Festival) this summer, it looks set to be Baker’s first film to garner mainstream awards appreciation.
That’s not to say that Anora falls into the category of Oscar bait. It’s as provocative as any of Baker’s previous features, with its stall set out from a tone-setting opening shot that slowly pans across a line-up of performances at the Manhattan strip club where Anora – call her Ani – makes her living. In a 180-twist on the Cinderella story, we follow Ani (Mikey Madison) as she meets a young, ultra-wealthy Russian Ivan or ‘Vanya’ (Mark Eydelshteyn), at her club. Private dances lead to paid-for sex which leads to a week’s company for $15,000 fee.
It’s a film of two halves, though your pulse will pound in both. Upfront, it’s the high-energy sex scenes and euphoric abandon that provide the momentum. Baker’s always been a superb, detail-focused world-builder, and here he neatly contrasts the superficial chintzy surfaces of Ani’s club and her working-class homelife in Brighton Beach with the jaw-dropping extravagance of Vanya’s NY abode and his hedonistic profligacy: there’s no illicit thrill he won’t throw money at, for the amusement of himself, Ani and his entourage of hanger-on pals. Sex, drugs and trips to Vegas are all on the cards, and it’s in Sin City where a chapel for Ani and Vanya awaits… For him, it’s ostensibly an easy way to extend his stay in the US, while you get the sense she’s happy to keep the party going. Despite the inherent frivolity of the union, it’s impossible to disregard their genuine chemistry.
But, in the second half of the reverse fairytale, the glass slipper smashes and Ani must walk through the shards. When Vanya’s oligarch parents get wind of his nuptials, they send right-hand man Toros (Karren Karagulian) and a couple of heavies (Yura Borisov and Vache Tovmasyan) to enforce an annulment. When Vanya splits, Ani and her three captors have a long night ahead of them trying to find the runaway groom. For all the escalating tension – there’s a ticking-clock element sparked by the impending arrival of Vanya’s parents – it’s impressive how funny Baker keeps it throughout. Every character, no matter their circumstances, has curiously relatable problems or glimmers of unexpected humanity, to a Tolstoyesque degree.
It’s fitting that the two main characters go by dual names, as a literal representation of the contradictory facets that everyone embodies. Madison is very likely to find herself in the awards conversation after this breakout turn. Until now she’s been best known to film audiences for eye-catching supporting roles in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019) and Scream (2022), but Anora is the definition of a star-making performance. Not only does she nail the physicality the character requires to be fully believable, and the specificity of her Brooklyn accent, but also gets Ani’s confidence and fluency in power dynamics, and fully embodies the joy, fear, despair and frustration that occur across the film’s roller-coaster trajectory, and she retains the capacity to knock the wind out of you when you least expect it.
Despite weighty themes of extreme socioeconomic disparity, transactional relationships, sex work and more, Baker’s film is never a slog, and remains propulsive and unexpectedly funny over it’s 139-min runtime. If Anora does end up being Baker’s ticket to awards glory, he’s won a seat at that table on his own terms.
Words by MATT MAYTUM
Anora is in cinemas now
