“Anora” Review
Mikey Madison steals every scene with her magnetic performance in “Anora”, the most recent winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
With recent winners including “Parasite”, “Triangle of Sadness” and “Anatomy of a Fall”, the Palme d’Or award of the Cannes Film Festival remains one of the most prestigious prizes a film can receive and a mark of true quality. Now, another film to have won the award has come to grace screens in America and, like its four predecessors, it’s being distributed by NEON, a company that continues to gain massive traction. The first American film to win the Palme d’Or since 2011’s “The Tree of Life”, Sean Baker’s “Anora” is a wickedly thrilling time that expertly balances numerous tones to make an entertaining film that is akin to going on a deeply personal journey.
Anora “Ani” Mikheeva (Mikey Madison) is a Brooklyn-based stripper whose Russian heritage comes in handy when she’s assigned by her club to a young man named Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) who requests a girl who can speak his native language. Impressed by his extreme wealth, Ani agrees to be his exclusive escort which results in them forming a strong bond. Wanting to stay in America, Ani and Vanya quickly get married which does not bode well with Vanya’s incredibly powerful family of Russian oligarchs. With the threat of annulment looming over her, Anora must fight to save her new marriage or even contemplate if such a hasty decision is even worth protecting.
While Sean Baker’s work has progressively garnered more attention and acclaim with each passing film (especially everything he’s made since “Tangerine”), he has remained consistent with his gung-ho, indie style of filmmaking whose fingerprints are all over “Anora”. Every shot in this film has the rapid energy of a newcomer taking bold risks combined with the seasoned wisdom of a filmmaker who knows these risks will pay off. The audacious nature of the story combined with its even more insane setting of Brooklyn makes this little New York City story feel like it's part of a line up consisting of “Midnight Cowboy”, “Smithereens”, “Mean Streets”, “She’s Gotta Have It” and “Annie Hall”. Some films like to say they’re New York movies but then shoot the majority of their scenes in Montreal, Atlanta or Vancouver but make no mistake about “Anora”. It is authentic, it is wild and it is a film worthy of being shot in New York City with winter photography by cinematographer Drew Daniels that can go from stark to gorgeous just like that.
As the titular character, Mikey Madison delivers her most explosive performance which is saying a tremendous lot considering she has been killed twice by immolation in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and “Scream V”. But instead of being a villain to creatively dispatch, Madison plays this character with such depth and such passion that she should absolutely garner an Oscar nomination come awards season. What makes Anora so compelling is how, despite existing in an environment of obscene materialism and wealth flaunting and even partaking in that behavior herself, she comes from a working class background. The few glimpses of her life outside the strip clubs that the audience gets to see don’t show a lot of promise and, as a native New Yorker, I can state with certainty that the early morning commute from her club on 38th Street in Midtown to Brighton Beach on Coney Island must be an exercise in tedium and torture. You quickly understand why she gravitates towards someone like Vanya because she sees it as a way to gain a kind of freedom that she’s never had. Despite longing for a life of obscene wealth and parties that would give the characters in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel a stroke, you not only understand Anora’s desire to leave her crummy life behind but also relate to her reactions.
Like in “Tangerine” and “Red Rocket”, Sean Baker displays a strong empathy for sex workers with a refreshing script that isn’t about some rich guy emancipating a woman from a demeaning job. I don't think Vanya could even emancipate his shoes from his feet without one of his staff assisting. With “Anora”, Sean Baker crafts one of his strongest films with Madison’s performance resulting in Baker’s most dynamic protagonist. Anora loves what she does because she’s good at it and because it puts her in a position of power. Sure these rich men may be fronting the bill but who is really in charge when the curtains close and the show begins? However, Anora does desire something more than freedom and the longer it’s withheld from her, the more frustrated she becomes. Anora wants to be viewed with respect instead of as a sex object. Throughout the film, people either see her as entertainment or a pariah so when a connection emerges that humanizes Anora, it showcases some of the strongest acting Madison has in the film.
Alongside a plethora of fun supporting roles, including Mark Eydelshteyn as the ineffectual Vanya and Yura Borisov delivering a surprisingly heartfelt performance as a henchman named Igor (I’m not making this up), the world of excess that Anora inhabits has no shortage of colorful characters. Through Baker’s screenplay, numerous tones are unveiled in the ever-evolving narrative including a heartfelt romance, thriller, family drama, dark comedy and social satire. “Anora” goes to some insane places and just shows how such extreme wealth and privilege can detach you from reality. While the film’s runtime is a well-balanced two-hours-and-nineteen-minutes, you feel that you’ve gone on this massive journey by the time the credits roll. As the film’s brilliant editor, Sean Baker knows just how to make a scene with a slow pace still feel completely engrossing only to be broken up by insane montages of drunken revelry.
If there is anything else I could point to aside from the awards “Anora” has already won or its technical brilliance or its striking performances, it would be its overarching theme of empathy and humanization. After all, sex workers have always been dehumanized and our society has a collectively low opinion of them despite their popularity being eternal. Watching “Anora” reminded me of a famous quote of the late, great Roger Ebert in his memoir “Life Itself”. “The movies are like a machine that generates empathy.It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.” “Anora” is one of those great films that moves like that wonderful machine and, despite being released over ten years after his death, I know that Roger Ebert would have loved this film for the same reasons that I think the vast majority of people who see this film are going to love it.
