Sean Baker’s Anora won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and is hotly tipped to win big at the Oscars and I know you won’t believe it’s as good as everyone is saying it is until you hear it from me so here you are: yes, it’s as good as everyone is saying it is.
All the cast are stellar but Madison is mesmerising and carries the whole thing
It stars Mikey Madison – who is a total knockout – as a sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch. But this is not Pretty Woman. This film takes Pretty Woman and smashes that fantasy over its knee, but with heart and soul and in a way that is as compelling as it is surprising. It came out a while ago but is still in cinemas so do yourselves a favour and get on it. It beats Gladiator II handsus downus.
Madison plays Ani, who lives in Brighton Beach, New York, where she works in a strip club. She pole dances and lap dances and is an escort on the side. She has a way of parting men from their money that is so expert and cheerful they barely know it’s happening. One evening she encounters Ivan (played by a terrifically frenetic Mark Eidelstein, who is known as the Russian Timothée Chalamet). They hit it off, and he invites her to his place, which turns out to be a huge, glass-fronted mansion overlooking the water with uniformed maids and a basement full of supercars. Her face! That smile! It’s up there with Julia Roberts’s smile. In addition, she can twerk.
Ivan has considerably more money than sense. He has been dispatched to America to study but is solely interested in sex, sex, partying, drinking, partying, sex, sex, playing video games, clubbing and partying. He is 21, going on 15. He is childish and thoughtless with zero impulse control. He proposes to Ani. She points at her wedding finger and says: ‘Three carats.’ ‘Four!’ he rejoins. Ani’s relationships are all transactional but Madison brings such interiority to the role you know that deep down she is wondering if this is something she can actually believe in.
They fly to Las Vegas to do the deed and then live happily ever after – for around 48 hours. His parents, once they are informed, lose their minds and dispatch a trio of henchmen to make sure the marriage is annulled. The leader is Toros (Karren Karagulian) who, you sense, has been clearing up Ivan’s messes since forever. Ani protests that it really is true love and she fights for Ivan (literally), even though he flees.
His parents have now decided to fly in, so the henchmen hunt for him. Off they go through the Brooklyn night, searching nightclubs and strip joints and arcades. There’s a tonal shift here and the film becomes very funny. They’re not the sharpest tools in the box, these fellas. They’ll put you in mind of John Travolta’s Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction. But do keep your eye on Igor (Yura Borisov). He is quietly watchful and you wonder: what is happening here?
Baker, whose previous films include Tangerine, Florida Project and Red Rocket, keeps several genres spinning. It’s a romance, comedy, dark tragedy, caper, told with such energy its 140-minute running time feels like no time at all. All the cast are stellar but Madison is mesmerising and carries the whole thing. Ani has almost no backstory, but Madison fills her out as a person who dares to hope. (There is a heartbreaking scene between Ani and Ivan’s mother.)
Some have complained about the lascivious gaze of the camera, but isn’t that the point? Isn’t that how sex workers are looked at? And isn’t Ani truly seen at the end? I can’t say more, only that the ending is as devastating as it is beautiful. Go see it for yourselves.
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