2024 ‧Drama/Comedy‧ 139m
Director Sean Baker makes movies about people in the margins. The Florida Project and Red Rocket have been praised for their humanity and interesting characters. His Palme d’Or winning Anora follows that trend.
Mikey Madison plays the titular character, preferring to be called Ani. She is a dancer and occasional sex worker at a Manhattan strip club. She seems popular with the clientele. One night she meets Vanya, who came to the club asking for a girl who speaks Russian. So begins a whirlwind romance where Vanya pays for several dates at his large mansion. He solicits her services for a whole week and flies her and his friends in a private jet to party in Las Vegas. While there, Ani and Vanya get married in a classic Vegas ceremony. They go back to New York, to his large mansion where soon word of his marriage have gotten to his rich and public Russian family. They are not happy. They send Vanya’s godfather and two goons to solve the problem. Ani’s whirlwind storybook romance becomes less fairy tale.
Mikey Madison’s performance quite exceptional as Ani. Though the character is not always “likeable” in the traditional sense, the audience is quickly on her side. Baker treats her life matter-of-factly and does not glorify or particularly judge. Madison adds an additional layer of empathy to a character that already has a lot of humanity written. The other standout performance is Yura Borisov as Igor, one of the goons. He too is adding an interesting layer to a typically one-dimensional brute and Baker plays around with their dynamic in a fascinating and funny way.
The pacing is going to be jarring for some. The first act of the film goes along at a nice clip, but once Vanya’s godfather and his goons show, things slow down. Ani and Vanya’s meet-cute, subsequent romance, and marriage, something that takes the better part of a month, is the first act. The rest of the film, Ani dealing with Vanya’s family, takes two days in the world of the film. Baker slows down the pace here, but also brings up the screwball antics with the goons and godfather. This change is deliberate and reflects what Ani is experiencing. A wild ride with a drawn out decrescendo.
It is easy to see how this made such an impression at Cannes. Anora touches on economic disparity and the desire to better one’s life while subverting romantic-comedy tropes. Baker here, as with his other films, seems to be an anti-Horatio Alger. Though there is still a lot of hope in Anora. The last scene will likely cause a lot of debate. The good kind of debate that asks for deep analysis and understanding, something both Anora the character as well as Anora the film deserves.
Grade: B
~Andrew