[7]
Mikey Madison stars as Anora, a New York stripper and escort who accepts a marriage proposal from a super-rich Russian playboy (Mark Eydelshteyn) during a lavish excursion to Las Vegas. The romance burns fast and bright before the boy’s oligarch parents find out about the nuptials. When they fly across the Atlantic demanding an annulment, the boy runs away and hides, leaving Anora to tangle with his aggressive handlers.
Anora is the most narrative and accessible film thus far from writer/director Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine), whose faux-documentary style is a breath of fresh cinematic air, even if his obsession with sex workers is beginning to wear thin. (Red Rocket was particularly unsavory and disappointing.) Anora struggles in its first hour, which is essentially a glossy whirlwind fantasy during which Madison’s and Eydelshteyn’s characters have a lot of sex and get married. The characters are hard to love — he’s lazy and stupid, and she has indiscriminate sex for money, so their relationship is only ever childish and superficial. Forty-five minutes in, I was afraid Anora would be another Red Rocket — forcing me to spend the entire run time with ugly characters doing stupid things.
The film pulls its ass out of the fire, however, when the boy’s Armenian handlers (Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, and a phenomenal Yura Borisov) break into the boy’s mansion and split the couple up. The fantasy becomes a dark comedy of errors for its second half, as Anora begrudgingly leads the Armenians all over New York in search of her runaway husband. Madison’s character becomes three-dimensional, leading to a satisfying confrontation with the Russian parents, and a surprisingly emotional catharsis in the film’s final five minutes.
If Red Rocket hadn’t shaken my confidence in Baker’s taste, I might have gone into Anora with a more open heart and mind. But the fact that the film won me over in its second half is no small fete. I suspect this is a film I will enjoy and appreciate more on repeat viewings. Even though the first half bothers me, the acting is Oscar-calibre, and Baker’s filmmaking — especially his directing and editing — is auteur level.
Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director, Actress (Mikey Madison), Original Screenplay, Film Editing
Oscar Nomination: Best Supporting Actor (Yura Borisov)
Cannes Film Festival: Palme d’Or Winner