Say what you will about the opulence and erudition that generally characterize the Cannes Film Festival, the prize winners and buzz generators at the annual French gathering of cinema’s best and brightest suggest a serious embrace of quality and originality rather than big budgets or star power. That penchant is on display in the awarding of this year’s Palme d’Or — the fest’s top accolade — to Anora, the latest movie from maverick American indie filmmaker Sean Baker. And the honor is justified.
It’s not as if screenwriter-director Baker came out of nowhere. He has produced a string of impressive low-budget, cinéma vérité–style movies set in what might be considered modern hard times. The three most recent examples are 2015’s tart Tangerine, shot entirely on iPhones as it follows the struggles of a transgender sex worker to survive on the mean streets of Hollywood; 2017’s The Florida Project, wherein a 6-year-old girl and her unemployed mother try desperately to find shelter in the vicinity of Orlando’s shiny, wholesome Walt Disney World; and 2021’s darkly amusing Red Rocket, which chronicles an aging porn star’s turbulent return to his small Texas hometown after he runs out of options in Los Angeles. Baker’s modus operandi is to lay bare pivotal moments in the lives of marginalized individuals. For Anora, he continues that approach with heightened drama and flair, delivering his most accomplished movie to date.
Grinding at the club, going to the chapel
Anora leaps into the story of Ani (shortened from her given name, Anora), a no-nonsense young woman from Brooklyn who works in a local gentleman’s club where she gives the customers lap dances and a few minutes of escape from the humdrum. She does the job with some measure of skill, but it’s a bit of grind, so to speak. So when Vanya, the good-looking, privileged, hedonistic son of Russian oligarchs, takes a shine to Ani and hires her for an entire week of companionship, she eagerly accepts. Vanya has Ani join him at his parents’ McMansion, since Mom and Dad are back in the old country, and he becomes increasingly smitten with Ani. Over the course of a week spent primarily in the sack, Ani begins to reciprocate charming slacker Vanya’s affections, while also getting used to the luxury that her lover offers her.
The couple’s spontaneous flight to Las Vegas at the end of the week leads to an impulsive proposal from the constantly hopped-up Vanya — and a spur-of-the-moment marriage at a chapel on the Strip. When Vanya’s folks learn of his wedding to a “prostitute,” they order the flunkies monitoring their wayward heir to force the newlyweds into an annulment. Convincing Vanya and especially Ani to end the marriage is a little more difficult than expected for the hapless hatchet men — a trio from the Eastern European immigrant community that populates New York’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. The resulting struggle, pitting the thugs versus the increasingly erratic Vanya and the determined Ani, delivers helter-skelter action (via, among other things, a zany car chase through New York City and the surrounding boroughs), sexual and romantic tension, and family dysfunction, while touching on issues of cultural assimilation and class conflict and generating bursts of comedy from the clash.
Mikey Madison is nothing short of a revelation as she plays it sexy, downtrodden, furious, righteous, and funny, depending on the situation.
A showcase for Mikey
While Baker’s savvy script and pinpoint direction are essential to the film’s success, the casting of Anora is equally crucial, in particular when it comes to the title character. And actress Mikey Madison — having already done memorable stints on the TV shows Better Things, Lady in the Lake, and as a member of the deadly Manson Family in Quentin Tarantino’s opus Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — is poised to take her career to new heights with her bravura portrayal of Ani. Madison is nothing short of a revelation as she plays it sexy, downtrodden, furious, righteous, and funny, depending on the situation. The rest of the cast is well-chosen with Mark Eydelshteyn’s feckless Vanya serving as an able scene partner for Madison and the actors playing his parents and the various henchmen adding more spice to the borscht.
The supporting players notwithstanding, it’s Madison as Ani who drives Anora. Whether she’s mock-seducing patrons at the club, convincing herself that a marriage to Vanya will change her life for the better, fighting against those who want to take what she believes is hers, or accepting what she comes to feel is inevitable, you can’t take your eyes off her. That’s a major plus, because Madison is on screen for most of the movie. Anora belongs as much to her as it does to the rightfully esteemed Baker.
Anora is currently playing at the AMC Metreon and the Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco.
