Sean Baker’s previous film, 2022’s Red Rocket (2022), began with *NSYNC’s Spotify-topping “Bye Bye Bye,” but Anora starts with the slightly lesser-known “Greatest Days” by British boy band Take That. Musically, it’s a bold choice, at odds with the frenetic spirit of what for over half its running time is a high-decibel screwball comedy that spends a lot of time in its establishing scenes in a New York strip joint.
The tentative nature of the lyric however — “This could be the greatest day of our lives” — is slyly indicative of where this modern Cinderella story is going, a film of three parts that accelerates at speed, cruises at high altitude for a surprisingly long time, then comes back down to earth with a deeply affecting and almost unbearably melancholy coda that sends the audience out in silence.
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The opening suggests a sister piece to Baker’s 2012 film Starlet, itself a prequel of sorts to Red Rocket, being an investigation of the quotidian lives of p*rn stars (which, in Red Rocket’s case, also means former p*rn stars). Anora (Mikey Madison) is a sex worker, giving raunchy topless lap dances in a busy upmarket strip club called Headquarters and going the extra mile for clients she likes. Ani, as she styles herself, is good at her job, and the punters like her. “Do your family know you do this?” asks one. “Do your family know you’re here?” she retorts.
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The other girls think Ani is classy because she has a butterfly tattoo (“I got dollar signs,” sighs one, “like a real ho”). She’s also smart, which is why she is assigned by the management to attend to a group of high-rolling Russians. Leader of the pack is Ivan Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), and the two hit it off instantly. Because of her grandmother, Ani has a decent grasp of Russia, and they communicate in bursts of both languages. He tips her with $100 bills, and while grinding in his lap she blows a big pink bubble with her bubblegum. “God bless America!” shouts Ivan excitedly, and they swap numbers.
Ivan summons her to his home, which Ani is shocked to discover is actually a massive mansion — complete with an elevator and a cryo chamber — which is in stark contrast to the rundown house she shares with her fractious flatmate. “What are you looking for?” she asks Ivan. “Sex?” he replies. So begins a passionate and highly sexual relationship, with the 23-year-old Ani falling for the hyper but strangely likable 21-year-old, who, after a quick Google search, is revealed to be the son of a mega-rich Russian businessman.
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Ivan asks Ani to be his girlfriend for a week, offering $15,000 for the pleasure of her company. The week passes in a druggy, boozy blur, and they wind up in Vegas, where Ivan reveals that he is due to be sent home to Russia, where he will join his father’s business. A sudden realization (“Don’t people get married in Vegas?”) plants the seed of an idea that Ivan thinks will solve all his problems: If they get married, he won’t have to go back home. “I will become American, and my parents will suck my dick,” he beams.
Reader, they do not. Instead, on hearing that his son has married a hooker, Ivan’s father summons the family fixer, Toros (Karren Karagulian), who sends his Armenian goons Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov) to keep an eye on Ivan until he can get there to sort it out. At which point all hell breaks loose, and Ivan runs away, leaving Toros with less than 24 hours to find him. Desperate, Toros offers Ani $10,000 to annul the marriage and walk away, but Ani is convinced that Ivan is the love of her life and will come to her rescue.
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Although Baker is no stranger to comedy, Anora is, for the most part, his broadest to date, playing out like an R-rated version of Howard Hawks’ Ball of Fire and reminiscent of Jonathan Demme’s forays into screwball, like Married to the Mob or, more pertinently, Something Wild, which this resembles (if you switch the genders of that film’s coupling). You could also put it in the bracket of Big Apple nightmare movies, alongside Scorsese’s After Hours and the Safdies’ Good Time, since the film’s most enjoyable sequence is the pursuit of Ivan, from a candy store in Coney Island to the meat racks of Manhattan, in a night of surprises involving drugs, vomit, a smashed-up tow truck and a vicious stripper smackdown.
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Baker regular Karagulian is especially good as the put-upon Toros, whose contempt for the childlike Ivan, and the whole obnoxious Zakharov clan, becomes clearer as the story progresses. But the star of the show is the fearless Mikey Madison, who gives her all as the dazed and confused Ani, screaming, “WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON?” while her world literally falls apart around her.
The nudity doubtless will be controversial, but it will be especially interesting to see what audiences make of the film’s heartbreaking ending — a subtle rebuttal to the allegations of exploitation that surely will ensue — in which Ani’s confident façade breaks down and we see the emotional cost of being manhandled by men for a living and the pain of being used by them under the pretext of love.
Title:Anora
Festival:Cannes (Competition)
Director-screenwriter:Sean Baker
Cast:Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yuriy Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan
Sales agent:FilmNation Entertainment
Running time:2 hr, 19 min
