Availability: Showing widely in theaters in the United States and internationally; not available for purchase or streaming at this time. Streaming for this Neon release estimated for Hulu in early 2025. See JustWatch here for future streaming and purchase availability.
Sean Baker’s High-Wire Act
Mikey Madison, a feisty lap-dancer who prefers her nickname “Ani” to her given name “Anora,” follows in the cinematic footsteps of women in the sex worker industry who have their own agency as well as a vulnerability that makes us care about them. We’ve seen this character before: Jane Fonda in “Klute” (1971), Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” (1990), and Catherine Deneuve in “Belle de Jour” (1967), among them. And we’ve seen the basic script: escort meets client, client wants to marry escort, marriage plans go awry, chaos ensues.
Right, Ani (Mikey Madison)
and her Russian playmate, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn),
make an engaging couple.
Madison’s compelling interpretation of Ani as emotionally strong, combative, and insistent on her view of herself and her new husband makes “Anora” one of the most accessible and crowd-pleasing winners of Cannes’ Palme d’Or. It doesn’t hurt that it’s also a comedy.
Above, the sex workers at the "gentlemen's club,"
treating their jobs like just another day at the office.
In this, Sean Baker’s latest look at an underclass, the comedy outweighs the potentially disturbing subject matter. The girls at the “gentleman’s club” where Ani plies her trade approach their jobs like typical employees. They ask their boss for health care coverage and 401(k)s. It’s obvious they have no emotional or erotic feelings for the “gentlemen”; they communicate with each other with hand signals while writhing on clients’ laps, peeling off the men like a row of Busby Berkeley dancers when they hear there’s a fight in the dressing room.
We want to believe in Ivan as Ani’s destiny, even while his main preoccupations are video games and drugs.
Ani and her Russian playboy playmate are immensely appealing, so much so that we willingly enjoy about an hour of their partying and the long scenes in the gentlemen’s club. We want to believe in Ivan as Ani’s destiny, even while his main preoccupations are video games and drugs.
Baker succeeds by hewing close to the line that at once separates and encompasses comedy and menace.
Things get serious—but not too serious--when the Russians, and the Armenians who serve them, enter the New York mansion of Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn, a 22 year-old in his first English language film), Anora’s charming, irresponsible Russian lover, who never saw a disco he didn’t like. Their job is to put an end to the romance and get the couple’s joyful but spur-of-the-moment Las Vegas marriage annulled. Baker succeeds by hewing close to the line that at once separates and encompasses comedy and menace. Toros, the “fixer” (Karren Karagulian) is a version of Harvey Keitel’s fast-talking cleaner-upper “The Wolf” in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” (1994). Toros is both unctuous and threatening. He wants to appear dominant and powerful and at the same time amiable and persuasive. Evil he is not, and he doesn’t seem intent on doing genuine bodily harm to our heroine, even while she’s bound and gagged or otherwise physically restrained.
In the meantime, Ivan has fled, setting up a somewhat tedious sequence in which Toros and his crew, Ani in tow, scour the city and its night clubs to find him.
Left, Karren Karagulian (who has appeared in 9 of Sean Baker's films) as Toros, the Armenian "fixer."
The film leavens Ani’s precarious situation with bumbling and humor (though short of black comedy), the script fluctuating throughout between anxiety—but not so much that you think anyone will be killed—and fun. Among the softening presences is Toros’s henchman, Igor (Yura Borisov), who quietly looks beyond Ani’s foul mouth and attack mode to find her innocent, intriguing, and maybe even lovable.
One imagines Ivan as Barron Trump.
The tone changes again when the Russian parents arrive. A clone of Melania Trump, tall, thin, courtier-dressed Galina Zakharov (Darya Ekamasova) reminds the room just who runs the show. Her oligarch husband (Aleksey Serebryakov) is a bemused observer. One imagines Ivan as Barron Trump.
The quiet presence of Igor
(Yura Borisov), right,
has more meaning
than it first appears.
In the final few minutes, with Igor and Ani, Baker serves up an ambiguous ending, raising the possibility of different interpretations of the film. How vulnerable is Ani? Is her “relationship” with Igor, such as it is, the result of trauma produced by her recent experience, relief at its resolution, or a product of her history as a sex worker? Baker—somewhat of an auteur in that he wrote, cast, directed and edited “Anora”—has tread this ground before, garnering awards and nominations: his Cannes-nominated “Red Rocket” (2021) centered on a washed-up male porn star; “The Florida Project” (2017), with its lower-class family living in a budget motel in the shadow of Disney World; and “Tangerine” (2015), which follows a transgender hooker chasing down her two-timing pimp through Hollywood on Christmas Eve. Filming these subjects without making them the object of the male gaze (or any other) and without producing prurient emotions or even the sense of “slumming it” can prove challenging. Baker is as good as anyone at this high-wire act. Maybe too good.
Mikey Madison's (as Ani, above) breakout performance is compelling.
She says: Even on reflection, it seems too light for the high wattage attention it’s getting.
He says: An entertaining film, though once it’s clear what Baker’s doing, it all seems a trifle facile.
Date: 2024
Director: Sean Baker
Starring: Mikey Madison, Karren Karagulian, Yura Borisov, Mark Eydelshteyn, Darya Ekamasova, Aleksey Serebryakov
Country: United States
Language: English, Russian, Armenian (not all subtitled)
Runtime: 135 minutes
Other Awards: 6 wins and 7 other nominations to date
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