It is always challenging to review a film I absolutely love. Not that I particularly enjoy ripping films apart (I really don’t) but it can be difficult to string together multiple ways to say “hey this film is great, you should see it now.” Enter “Anora,” the festival darling and current awards race frontrunner. For those of us in the know that follow auteur filmmakers, Sean Baker has been the king of indie drama on the outskirts of the industry but constantly garnering fans from both critic and audiences alike. Granted, Baker’s films often deal dark blows and highlight troubled protagonists, and typically center on sex work and sex workers. This film is no different, but this time he has managed to combine all of his common thread subject matter and visual flare into his most accessible and crowd pleasing outing to date. Even if it’s not considered the best of his work by Baker stans, no one can deny it is truly something special.
Easily my favorite film of TIFF this year, “Anora” hit like a bolt of lightening in my press screening audience. Which for the record, typically approach films with tepid responses even when they eventually rave about them on Letterboxd later. Not this time. The crowd roared with laughter and marveled at Baker’s exquisite star, and cheered in moments of triumph and left stunned at the films final moments. Visceral responses like this just don’t happen at press screenings, and “Anora” illicited them all from everyone. Baker is never one to leave you without something to talk about, and his latest film gives everyone plenty to chew on. But it’s the honing of his skills and focus on transactional relationships as well as his unraveling of the American dream that shine the brightest in “Anora.” It helps that he also found the discovery of a generation in Mikey Madison, a firecracker of a performer who embodies Ani/Anora with complete abandon.
Madison delivers a breakthrough performance in “Anora,” the kind that demands attention on a global stage and the kind you just don’t see often enough. Though surrounded by an equally great supporting cast, it is Madison with whom the film wholly relies on, with Baker’s script demanding her mind, body, and soul to bring the character to life in a fully realized and empathetic way. Anora is brash and loud and defiant, using sex as a weapon to not just protect herself but also get what she wants when she wants. She’s charming and beautiful but also fiesty and street smart, which is already a lot to ask of a performer. But “Anora” also asks her to give her body over too, which Madison willingly bares all and takes on the challenge of being a believable dancer. Yes, that’s HER on the pole, and I mean that as the highest compliment of discipline I can assign. It’s honestly incredible to watch her, and the film simply doesn’t work nearly as well without Madison’s electric performance at its core.
Written and Directed by Sean Baker, “Anora” follows the titular character Ani/Anora (Madison), a dancer and sex worker at a club in New York. She’s good at what she does, and thanks to her Russian roots is asked to entertain the young son of a Russian oligarch Vanya (an equally great breakout performance from Mark Eidelstein). Enamoured by her, he invites her to his mansion and parties for several sexual encounters, and decides that he loves her and wants to marry her. Not just because he’s smitten, but also because if she marries him he doesn’t have to go back to his parents in Russia and can stay in America live his immature, drug fueled party life. Ani agrees, and after a quick marriage in Las Vegas, things quickly devolve into chaos after his parents hear of this marriage and send his handlers to capture them both and have it anulled. Of course, Vanya flees the minute they come for him, leaving Ani in the hands of his bodyguards to fend for herself. This sends them all on search through New York to take away the new life she so briefly had.
The film also stars Yura Borisov, Vache Tovmasyan, Aleksei Serebryakov, and Darya Ekamasova. “Anora” is stronger in the first half than the second, as the whirlwind of a young, drug fueled “Pretty Woman” type romance takes shape. It becomes clear rather quickly that Vanya acts wholly on impulse, while Ani – hoping against hope that this is her way out and onto a better life – takes a more measured approach to her implusiveness. Even when she agrees to the shotgun proposal, there’s hesitation in her eyes and a sense that everything that is transpiring is rooted in transactional convenience rather than actual love. “Anora” smartly keeps these kinds of things in the background in the first hour, lulling you into believing that it truly is young love and Ani has finally achieved the life she always felt she deserved.
But unlike the happy ending of similar romcoms that clearly inspire the beginning of the story, Baker injects “Anora” with a healthy dose of reality. Things fall apart quickly, and how the rich view everything and everyone as objects to be bought and sold at their leisure begins to take shape. There is a clear commentary on class and sex that slowly but surely seep their way into the fabric of the film, and as the romcom turns into a kind of kidnapping into a road trip search movie, “Anora” never loses sight of its core and what Baker is trying to say through his characters. Again, Madison is nothing short of perfection, shouldering so much at every turn and shattering your soul in the film’s final moments. For all its odyssey of drugs and sex and comedy and shenanigans, “Anora” always has something meaningful to say underneath the surface.
The final 10 minutes of the film with make or break the rest of it, and how you come away from its conclusion will define how you feel about “Anora” as a whole. Baker takes a bold swing, and for my part I felt rewarded by it even if it is tragic. Make no mistake, for as fun as everything the film delivers becomes, in true Sean Baker fashion he goes for the jugular of heartache and of course, Madison is up to the task in every single way. The ending is both devastating and beautiful and tragic and hopeful all in about 30 seconds, a testament to how well crafted “Anora” is and why it is truly one of the best films of the year. Not everyone will come away from it with that some conclusion, and some may even find its ending the most inaccessible part of the film, thus undoing all of “Anora’s” goodwill from such an exciting and engaging journey.
And honestly, that’s ok because this film exists to challenge us. It digs deep into the core of its presented issues and how we think about relationships in the modern age, how we understand sex work and sex and class and rich and poor, all under the guise of a romcom love story framework. These themes build slowly under the surface, and then explode in both predictable and unpredictable ways. Aside from a controversial final moment, the film does drag on its scenes a bit too long, seemingly in a effort to unfold events in real time and give all of the characters surrounding Ani time to breath. This results in some of the film’s funniest and most entertaining moments to putter out over time as the camera lingers too long in the room, and its second half does take a little too long to get to where we need to go. For all its greatness, “Anora” does have a tendency to stretch itself too thin and spin its wheels when it could tighten things up a bit to make it that much more potent and effective.
It’s not enough for me to knock this film down at all, and I hope the Academy – in all of their newfound global “diveristy”- can look past their clutched pearls at sex being at the center of a story and embrace the underlying commentary to reward it. In every major category like Picture, Director, Screenplay, and yes, Actress, “Anora” deserves to be the frontrunner. Madison is a star of undeniable talent, and she deserves all of the flowers because you won’t find a better performance this year.
Believe the hype, “Anora” is the best film of the year. An electric, propulsive, deconstructed love story with a star making performance at the helm.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Stars
“Anora” is now playing in theaters. You can watch the trailer below.
