Anora (2024)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Wed Reckoning

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Sean Baker's fascinating Anora takes a lurid story of sex, drugs, and violent threat, and deconstructs it to the point that it almost becomes a deadpan comedy, with bittersweet consequences.

Anora, or "Ani" (Mikey Madison), is a sex worker from a Russian neighborhood of Brooklyn, who makes a living performing lap dances in a New York club. One night she meets Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), a wealthy young man out for a good time. Since she understands Russian, her boss asks her to take care of him for the evening. They begin to like each other and Ivan invites Ani to a New Year's party. She learns that he's the son of a powerful Russian oligarch. Smitten, Ivan offers to hire her to spend a week with him.

During that week, they travel to Las Vegas to party, and Ivan proposes to her. She agrees and they have a Las Vegas wedding. Back in New York, Ivan's family has discovered what has happened, and send Toros (Karren Karagulian), Ivan's godfather, as well as two henchmen, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), to Ivan's place to find out what happened. They inform Ani that the marriage will be annulled, over Ani's violent protests. Ivan runs, and the other four must find him, somewhere in New York, before Ivan's angry parents arrive.

As with his previous four movies (Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket), writer/director Baker turns to sex-workers as his subject in Anora, attempting to demystify and humanize them.

The movie begins almost as a documentary, frankly showing what a night of work is like for Ani. Baker depicts it as a series of mostly unconnected, fly-on-the-wall moments, painting a larger picture of this world, rather than telling a specific story. It's routine, all performance.

Baker continues this method when Ani meets Ivan, even though things begin to stir and become more exciting and romantic; it keeps us rooted in reality. We're swept away, but we keep one foot on the ground. When, as one character predicts ("I give it two weeks!") things fall apart, we stay on Ani, who, along with the old-school Toros and the two henchman (one of whom Ani has severely wounded with a kick to the head), become like a comedy foursome. At first Ani rages and protests and insists that she and Ivan will remain married, but soon they're bickering over whether to walk a few blocks or take the car, and about driving and traffic.

As night turns to morning, and harsh reality sets in, Ani becomes more and more vulnerable, loosening her defenses, showing her hurt, no longer performing. During the same period, Igor becomes more and more of a central character, a man of few words who has a humanitarian streak (we learn that he lives with his grandmother), and the pair of them, whether they like it or not, form a special bond. Anora, which won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, is perhaps difficult to describe or pin down, but it's a truly intriguing, and even moving experience.