Directed By Sean Baker

Starring – Mikey Madison, Mark Eidelshtein, Paul Weissman

The Plot- Anora (Madison), a young sex worker from Brooklyn, gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son (Eidelshtein) of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.

Rated R for strong sexual content throughout, graphic nudity, pervasive language, and drug use.

Anora Trailer #2 (2024) (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

Sean Baker’s soul mission as a filmmaker seems to be to de-stigmatize irresponsible misconceptions about the sex worker industry, while inscribing empathetic humanity in ways that no other filmmaker has attempted, and in ‘Anora’ this concept is taken to a whole other level, this time with sex driving so much of the primary components to the movie’s storytelling, but in ways that are meaningful to the depths of the exploration. This makes the film the single most important that Baker has conjured, to date, without necessarily being my favorite, as through the eyes of his most empowering female character to date, Baker delves into how many women use sex as a coping mechanism to suppressed trauma, with this one enacting it as her primary means to income that drives much of her live-fast lifestyle. This deep layer of subconscious storytelling isn’t necessarily one I expected from a film advertised like ‘Anora’ was, but it does conjure a compelling character who I not only constantly felt conflicted for emotionally, as a result of the occasionally cruel and unapologetic ways she treats characters, but also one serving as the loudest trainwreck in a movie full of wild card characters, who builds such impenetrable walls until an unexpected ending takes a turn for genius in this movie’s favor. Unpredictability is essentially something that can be labeled throughout this film, as it begins one way, before constantly deviating creatively and tonally from the expectations of the audience, but particularly in that ending it gets us closer to Anora’s vulnerabilities than we ever had a chance to coherently interpret in 135 minutes of exploration, serving Baker once more towards saving his loudest punch of punctuation in the moments it matters most; sending audiences home with the single biggest gut punch in a movie, but in ways that no one could’ve possibly been expecting. Baker’s direction is as fearless as it’s ever been, both in the immediate abrasiveness of incorporating sex and vulgarity to the immediate moments of the opening act, in order to desensitize common tenderness about the subject matter in a politically correct society, but especially in the shifts of palpable humor that has this film beginning as a whirlwind romance before morphing into a screwball comedy. That might sound like a seismic shift that could feel terribly compromising to ‘Anora’s’ integrity, but Baker has always been effective at conjuring comedy out of the least expected places, this time mostly from a group of Russian goons forced to put their minds together to make sure a certain transaction goes across seamlessly. Like Anora or Vanya, these characters are written with so much depth and personality that makes them a pleasure to experience, particularly Yura Borisov’s Igor who continuously stole my heart, in the ample amount of screen time they take from the film’s primary focus, but also a clever intuition from Baker to elicit so many unforeseen circumstances that echo life’s many spontaneities, with most of them mirroring realities in ways that are every bit cruelly unforgiving to characters, while feeling unavoidably awkward to the audience. It’s also a visually stunning improvement and evolving for Baker and his trusty ‘Red Rocket’ cinematographer, Drew Daniels, who stun and sizzle with such an intoxicating technique that lusters the lifestyle of upper class privilege without sacrificing the immersive grittiness of handheld photography that make so many of his films feel like budget-blessed documentaries playing out in real time. Particularly meaningful are the production’s glowingly radiant lighting choices during interior sequence that evoke such a transfixing taste to exhilarant exoticism, as well as the production’s ability to occasionally deviate away from the confined settings of Baker’s previous films, where the boardwalks of Jersey collide with the feverish freneticism of Vegas as the city that never sleeps, hurling us into a whirlwind of lavish experiences that fuel a relationship that anyone can see as toxic. But as good as Baker is, he would be a whole lot less effective without the primary pieces in play, as Madison and Eidelshtein are each revelations to the movie’s prominence that demand emphatic praises. Madison has been destined to break out for a long time, so her eye-opening portrayal as the titular character feels anything but surprising, especially for the fiery resonance and stoic resiliency that she effortlessly supplants to the character, all the while maintaining a palpable and consistent cadence to a Jersey accent that energizes whenever her volume and vulgarities are pushed to eleven on the dial. Speaking of cadence, Eidelshtein’s work is nothing short of brilliant, despite a far less significant amount of screen time to Madison’s dominance, with breaths of broken English amid a Russian accent that results in quite a few elevated deliveries summoning comedic timing. While the chemistry between Madison and Eidelshtein doesn’t exactly require them to pine for one another, as they have a relationship based primarily on money and sex, their banter during those moments away from the bedroom actually goes a long way towards surveying the foundation of this seemingly shallow arrangement, and though the two share far less time together than the audience could ever expect, they still each receive ample opportunity to leave a lasting impact on the proceedings, which each of them utilize with limitless personality and gravitas that elevate them far beyond feeling like types.

NEGATIVES

Where this film falls short of Baker’s magnum opus, ‘The Florida Project’ for me personally is in the inconsistent utilization of a ballooned 136-minute run time, which doesn’t always make the most of its minutes to the movie’s appeal. The first act doesn’t have a lot of storytelling, as it’s essentially just Anora and Vanya’s overnight romance leading to their untimely marriage, but I still found it ironically a lot more compelling and faithful to the movie’s thematic foundation than a second act that flies off of the rails as an aforementioned screwball comedy. While the material did elicit more than a few hearty laughs from this critic, the second act makes the film suddenly feel more about Vanya than it does the titular protagonist, cutting her arc and evolution in ways that have us patiently waiting for the movie’s climatic final twenty minutes to right this wrong, all the while undercutting a bit of the dramatic stakes that should hang in the balance of a Russian family coming to claim their son, but doesn’t because the three men tasked with guarding Anora suddenly feel like they’re plucked from a Benny Hill movie. Within this pocket are also some long-winded scenes that I wish were trimmed a bit for time, particularly during Anora’s captivity, which essentially oversteps repetition on the third scene of back-to-back similarities that has this feeling like a movie playing out in real time. Beyond this, my other problem with the film does kind of fix itself by the film’s big closing moment to the movie, and ultimately what it represents, but before this moment I found the character of Anora to be mean-spirited and downright detestable in the moments that speak the loudest. I obviously interpret this as being intentional by Baker, especially with what the ending reveals, but it made it so hard to summon empathy and concern for her and the kind of underlining tragedies that Baker has built his third acts on, and while those closing moments certainly change my opinions about her a bit, I don’t feel like they make her come across as any more redeeming, and I fully expect to be in the minority on that opinion.

OVERALL
‘Anora’ blasts Sean Baker to the stratosphere of mainstream notoriety, with his single most revealing and important film in a career filled with year’s-best bangers. With evolving techniques that expand his capabilities as a visual storyteller without compromising his uniqueness as a visionary, as well as a last woman standing breakthrough turn for Madison, the film earns all of the reputable praise that it garnered from being this year’s Palme d’Or winner, even if it doesn’t always make the best use of its ambitious minutes, conjuring an audaciously edgy delve into sexual suppression through elevated chaos that has audiences asking the right questions by film’s end.

My Grade: 8/10 or A-