Over the course of his career, filmmaker Sean Baker has delivered intimate films of humanity and connection that take place in the nooks and crannies of society: the places that are often the most overlooked, economically, socially and cinematically. He’s made movies about friendship, family and even cautionary tales, but his Palme d’Or-winning “Anora” is his first true-blue love story.
Or so it seems. Like any Baker film, “Anora” is not so easy to define, not a pat genre piece, no straightforward happy endings in sight. But it does deliver the experience of falling in love, as we fall in love with Ani (Mikey Madison), our plucky protagonist (and the title character), and in love with “Anora” itself, a rollicking, wild bender of an adventure from the beaches of Coney Island to the desert sands of Las Vegas and back again.
Ani (short for Anora) knows her worth. An exotic dancer at a New York City strip club, the Brooklyn beauty hustles lap dances on the floor and has a price for extracurricular sex work (holiday rates are higher) — she’s an independent contractor after all. When Ivan Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), the spoiled young son of a Russian oligarch she’s been seeing, proposes a weeklong “girlfriend experience,” she negotiates a larger sum. When he actually proposes to her, in a heap of rumpled bed sheets during a weekend partying in Sin City, she accepts by pointing at her ring finger: “three carats.”
The whirlwind romance that makes up the first half of “Anora” plays out like a Gen Z “Pretty Woman,” and money is always on their mind, the relationship never not transactional. When Ani marries Ivan, she gets a Russian sable coat and crashing privileges in his Brighton Beach mansion, while he gets a green card, and to give the middle finger to his parents.
Baker presents this version of a Cinderella story in a heady, dizzying, almost absurdist montage of conspicuous consumption (and consummation), which comes to a screeching halt as soon as Ivan’s parents catch wind of the happy union. They dispatch their local Armenian fixer, Toros (Karren Karagulian), who enlists his brother Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and their hired muscle Igor (Yura Borisov) to deliver the couple to a judge to get an annulment. When Ivan makes a run for it, “Pretty Woman” turns into “After Hours,” as Ani and the heavies set off across southern Brooklyn looking for him.
Despite the comparisons, “Anora” is a Baker project through and through, and not just because it’s a film about a sex worker, a theme to which he often returns in his oeuvre. “Anora” boasts the profane, screwball humor of “Red Rocket” and “Tangerine,” the tenderness of “Starlet,” and the unique ensemble of “The Florida Project.” It’s hilarious, but it finds humor in the heightened situations, never making a joke at the expense of the characters.
Like in other Baker films, these characters are defined by their economic circumstances, both the workers — including sex workers and fixers, but also attorneys, guards, maids, pilots, drivers, massage therapists — and the unfathomably wealthy Zakharovs. Exploring this world of hyper-wealth allows Baker to splash out a bit. “Anora” feels bigger than most of his films, exploring a world where private jets, penthouse suites and pulsing nightclubs are the norm. In carefully observing this wealth disparity, he finds that these oligarchs also exist on the fringes of society in their own little-seen world. They too are defined by their economic circumstances, driven to maintain their wealth and power, now threatened by little Ani.
But he remains focused on those in their employ, the lowest in the hierarchy. Ani and Igor, two kids from Brighton Beach, are in the same boat, both using their bodies to perform labor; while Igor threatens and enforces, Ani titillates and pleases. Baker and cinematographer Drew Daniels draw these two together for this journey — as soon as Igor enters the picture, he never leaves the frame. He takes in every insult thrown her way, and every punch, kick and slur she throws in return, taking a few himself. He’s the only person who doesn’t underestimate Ani. He sees her.
At the center of this careening circus of chaos is the tiny dancer with a banshee wail. Madison, memorable in “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” and the “Scream” reboot, is a whirling dervish of glitter and acrylic, sex and rage. She taps into a seemingly bottomless well of sheer emotion (and epithets) to deliver a towering performance. When she finally lets the wall fall, it’s in a moment of true emotional catharsis and hard-fought, surprising connection, where she finally lets us in. That moment is the pearl at the center of the oyster, a gem produced of distress. Baker finds it every time, and “Anora” is his most spectacular pearl yet.
