From Jeff Nelson

Filmmaker Sean Baker is a master of realism, depicting underrepresented perspectives that mainstream filmmaking typically sweeps under the rug. From a Chinese immigrant working in food delivery in Take Out (2004) to the residents of a budget Kissimmee motel in The Florida Project (2017), he structures his characters within the worlds they exist. In Baker’s latest movie, Anora connects the universes of a sex worker and a spoiled Russian manchild into spellbinding storytelling that enchants on nearly every level.

Anora (Mikey Madison) is a young sex worker from Brooklyn, New York. She meets the incredibly wealthy Ivan (Mark Eidelshtein), who asks her to marry him on a whim. When the news reaches his homeland in Russia, his parents make a short-notice trip to get the marriage annulled.

One of Baker’s strongest assets as a storyteller is how the settings and characters influence one another. Anora is no exception. He starts the film in the exotic dance club called Headquarters, where the titular character and her co-workers put their charm on their clientele to make a living. The club is brimming with thumping dance music and gyrating female bodies for the male gaze, but there’s an underlying sisterhood between the women, except for the antagonistic Diamond (Lindsey Normington). Anora is a skillful dancer, who seizes the opportunity to change her entire life trajectory when Ivan enters the club requesting a woman who can speak Russian.

Anora is a multi-dimensional fairy tale of seduction, where Ivan’s wealth and Anora’s beauty allure one another into a world they would otherwise never get a glimpse into. Mansions, wild parties, drugs, alcohol, sex, a bottomless pit of cash, and a luxurious trip to Vegas lure them into a dreamland. It all comes to a crashing halt when the powerful family’s employees, Toros (Karren Karaguilian), Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan), and Igor (Yura Borisov), erupt into a panic to get the marriage annulled and save their jobs before the boy’s parents show up in New York.

The two distinct halves of Anora could have easily become a tonal mess, but Baker’s confident hand seamlessly marries them in a drop-dead gorgeous blend of comedy, drama, and romance. It has the power to make you laugh in one scene and then put a pit of sadness in the bottom of your stomach the next. It moves from a dreamy Cinderella story to a modernized take on the screwball comedy but far more vulgar before crashing down to reality. By the end, the film reaches a profound conclusion that hits like a ton of bricks and makes the whole experience feel all the richer for it.

Madison’s leading performance is deserving of all the praise. The movie gets a little shouty at times, but she has such a dynamic screen presence that shines through loud and silent moments alike. Borisov is the other essential key to making Anora work as well as it does. It’s a subtle performance with stellar comedic timing. Fortunately, there isn’t a weak link in the entire cast.

Anora is a cinematic sensation – an enthralling blend of sharp humor, raw emotion, and vivid storytelling. Baker hasn’t lost his scrappy style, but this multi-faceted story winds to an unexpected place of sobering emotion. Behind the laughs and the thrills is a heart-rending core that isn’t so easy to shake, transforming its cast of colorful characters into so much more than the archetypes media tells us they are.

Rating: 4.5/5

Anora hits theaters on October 18th, 2024.

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