Sean Baker’s ‘Anora’ is a Seductive Forbidden Love Story
Sean Baker's "Anora" spins a savvily subversive Cinderella story featuring Mikey Madison's glowing performance in the title role.
The wily 23-year-old exotic dancer who’s the heart, eyes, and soul of writer-director Sean Baker’s Anora is also remarkably naïve, even for a stripper with a heart of gold. Played by Scream (2022) standout Mikey Madison, Anora, or Ani to friends and customers, honestly has no idea what she’s getting herself into when she accepts an offer from one especially enthusiastic customer to be his “horny girlfriend” for the week.
Loaded, in every sense of the word, 21-year-old Russian heir Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Russian newcomer Mark Eydelshteyn) takes such a liking to Ani that he whisks her from the strip club to his mansion overlooking Brooklyn’s Jamaica Bay to a penthouse suite in Vegas.
Blasting bong hits and vodka shots, they party with his friends, ball like billionaires, have raucous sex all over the place, and fully submit to their Pretty Woman fantasy.
But, in fluidly shot, snappily edited scenes of the ladies at work at the club, Baker’s already shown how smoothly Ani can hustle the floor. She’s a clever woman, and even if she’s more accustomed to the lapdance lounge and her shared apartment next to the elevated subway tracks than luxury suites in Vegas, she presumably should expect that there will be a catch.
She might not, but Baker understands the audience will be waiting for some kind of axe to fall, especially after Vanya drops a “Do you know who my father is?” on Ani. Not unlike the filmmaker’s previous serio-comic character studies Red Rocket, The Florida Project, and Tangerine, Anora toys with audience expectations of just how badly things might go for the deluded hustler protagonist who can only see the finish line.
Madison pulls off Ani’s contradictory qualities of shrewdness and guilelessness, plus adds a stiff New Yawk accent and loads of forthright sensuality. Ani seduces Vanya without making it look like an act. His seduction tactics, by comparison, are more ostentatious — jewels, fur, private jet.
Eydelshteyn injects his raving party boy with hints of pathos, the poor rich kid, alone and neglected in his empty mansion, though Baker also plays with expectations of whether Vanya will turn out to be Ani’s Prince Charming, a cad, or as much of a victim of circumstance as she might be. He is, after all, not only paying her for sex, but for real companionship, despite her constantly making the point that she is not a prostitute.
Theirs is a compromised romance, to say the least. Yet, among the film’s most alluring qualities is the lingering uncertainty over whether we’re watching a love story or a transaction. It’s a sweet and sad confusion. Whatever their relationship means to them, their bond is tested when consequences for their whirlwind romance arrive in the form of Vanya’s father’s Armenian henchmen.
At this turn, the film loses some steam — on the one hand, intentionally, as it should feel like reality barges in and bursts the lovers’ bubble. On the other hand, the film goes a little soft in portraying that reality, veering towards a lighthearted, not entirely credible, treatment of supposedly life-or-death stakes that, along with overlong scenes in the latter half, depletes the tension.
Although, to his credit, in the movie’s protracted middle, Baker allows new, unexpected connections to emerge between characters, as with Ani and one of the henchmen, compassionate muscle Igor, rendered by Yura Borisov with placid but arresting intensity.
Igor might be an unlikely ally for Ani, or merely the calm, knowing face of her doom. Again, the question lingers with rich uncertainty, like the love story Ani thinks she’s living, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Anora (★★★☆☆) is playing in New York, L.A., Denver, Phoenix, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco. It will open in D.C. on Nov. 1, with further cities being added throughout November. Visit www.fandango.com.
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