Movie: Anora (2024)
Production Companies: FilmNation Entertainment, Cre Film
Distributed by: Neon
Producers: Alex Coco, Samantha Quan, Sean Baker
Directed by: Sean Baker
Written by: Sean Baker
Starring: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasayan, Yura Borisov
Review by: Stefano Todaro

What’s it like living life when you have nothing to lose? This is the backbone of Anora. Writer and director Sean Baker gives us two opposites on the “nothing to lose” spectrum. Anora, who prefers to go by “Ani,” is a stripper who has limited family and does what she can to make enough money to survive and enjoy life. Ivan, a 21-year-old with the emotional intelligence of a child, is the son of Russian billionaires and hasn’t had to work a day in his life. Regardless of the decisions the two of them make, Ani will still be struggling to survive, and Ivan will still have billionaire parents.

Anora and Ivan cross paths at the strip club where Anora works every day. He’s a VIP guest who is demanding VIP treatment, and Anora is the only dancer at the club who understands and speaks Russian. It’s a match made in heaven. Ivan is quickly enamored and offers Ani a nice chunk of change to be his girlfriend for the week while he’s in the US visiting. What could go wrong? Ani accepts the offer.

What ensues is a cathartic week of sex, drugs, and living life. With Anora loving the money and the luxury of being with Ivan and Ivan loving the sex, they make the obvious decision to get married.

There is something so intoxicating with how Baker showed the moments of bliss between the two. Once the two get hitched, Baker’s marriage montage is backed by the soaring “Greatest Day (feat. Calum Scott) Robin Schulz Rework” by Take That. It overwhelms your emotions and surfaces the thought that maybe this relationship was meant to be, maybe it will all work out in the end. Baker, being the realist that he is, doesn’t let everything work out the way it might in a major studio rom-com. Instead, what follows is a high-intensity romp of trying to quickly put all the pieces back together of a situation that shouldn’t have ever been.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes Anora so endearing because every element of the script, acting, storytelling, setting, plot, and camerawork masterfully works together. There is no doubt that Madison’s turn as Anora is one of the most remarkable parts of this film. It is also one of the best performances you’ll see all year and maybe one of the best performances you’ve seen this decade so far. Something that makes her performance so astonishingly good is her ability to own a scene but then turn around and simply exist in a scene that doesn’t demand her presence. Madison is comfortable doing exactly what she needs to do to make it all work. Yura Borisov also deserves recognition for his subtle and heartwarming performance as Igor.

When all hell breaks loose midway through, a group made up of Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasayan, and Yura Borisov sends this thing into overdrive, turning the movie into a high-octane rush. Supremely funny and equally tense, watching this group with Mikey Madison for large swaths of run time is one of the biggest joys of this year in movies. All of this is to say that the entire cast of Anora shines in ways you don’t often see from ensemble-style storytelling.

Sean Baker makes movies that focus on different niches of people and how their location and those around them affect their lives. The Florida Project focused on a single mom living with her young daughter in a motel just outside of Disney World, Red Rocket focused on a retired porn star returning to his hometown in Texas, and Anora follows this same formula by highlighting a stripper living in Brooklyn. Baker’s sophisticated destigmatization of sex and sex workers is what makes his films, like Anora, so powerful. He understands the circumstances, he understands what a realistic amount of agency looks like, and he understands that not everything works out the way you think it should.

Anora is a genuinely laugh-out-loud time, and Borisov, Karagulian, and Tovmasayan are some of the reasons why Anora works so well as a comedy. But all of the grittiness and emotional depth Baker layers on make this film much more than just something to laugh at. It’ll fill your heart and break your heart, but there’s no doubt that whatever you get from it, you’ll be immersed in Baker’s vision. I’m in awe of all of Anora’s parts, but I’m even more in awe of the sum of those parts.

9.7/10

By: Stefano Todaro