Writer-director-editor Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner Anora is the first film I’ve covered for this website for which I don’t have a definite star rating in my head, at least at the time of this writing. Typically, films as ambitious, confident, and engaging as Anora would garner four or five stars from me. However, I can’t help feeling that Baker’s tonal ambition, while admirable and even groundbreaking at points, sometimes pushes him far over his skis here.
Anora sells itself by inviting us to a manic screwball comedy and getting us to stay for its character study and social statements. Where that template has worked for Baker in the past, this film just feels different, partly because we’re often stuck watching an innocent, naïve, trusting person go down a dark rabbit hole she did not deserve. Then again, it has a brilliant ending which tells us exactly where Baker stands on all of this, so it’s not like we’re watching a film without a head on its shoulders. In any event, I’m sure it’s coming across just how conflicted I am, and I’m also sure that about half of the audience will love Anora, and about half will hate it. I’m somewhere on the positive end of that spectrum, but as I unpack more of this film, please bear in mind that this is a film I think warrants unpacking for years to come. Whether it will appreciate in public-opinion value is anyone’s guess, but regardless of my qualms, it’s an undeniably intoxicating minute-to-minute experience.
23-year-old Anora (Mikey Madison) is an erotic dancer at a high-priced gentlemen’s club in Brooklyn. When she meets Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the spoiled-rotten son of a Russian oligarch, things heat up very quickly, moving from the V.I.P. room to Ivan’s idyllic bedroom, just across the bay from Anora’s native Brighton Beach. His mansion is unlike anything Anora has ever seen before, and his company is enjoyable enough, so when he offers to pay her to be his girlfriend for a week, she heartily agrees. Where the couple get ahead of themselves is marrying in Vegas. A whole team of hired hands of Ivan’s father comes looking for them with the intent to force them to annul the marriage and save the family’s image. The impulsive 21-year-old Ivan runs from the situation, leaving the rest of the cast to give chase, and oh, what a wild goose chase it is.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Baker isn’t one for bite-size scenes, and nowhere is this more apparent than when Anora tries to kick and scream her way out of being held against her will by Ivan’s father’s crew before and immediately after Ivan runs away. This long sequence is some of the best work Baker — or any filmmaker, for that matter — will ever do. It manages to be sensationally funny, almost unbearably tense, and filled with pathos all at once. Unfortunately, it’s also a spot where some of my concerns regarding the film’s treatment of its main character arise. She’s certainly shown to be as capable as one could be in this situation, but we are essentially watching a woman being abused by several men, even if their motives are not sexual. I’m not inherently against seeing this kind of material on screen, but for as well-executed as it is, I would have preferred to get some further insight into Anora the person, given the stakes involved and the time allotted. She behaves how we would expect her to behave, and admirably so, but the film is simply spinning its wheels, even while being very, very entertaining.
Madison’s performance as Anora is the rare case where an actor seems slightly ahead of their director in terms of sussing out what the proper tone should be. She is tremendous in every single scene, with vulgar confidence and vulnerable deer-in-headlights looks to spare. Madison does such wonders with the character that I felt cheated by how much Baker shoots her as a sex object for other characters. I’m by no means accusing Baker of blunt fetishization, but I do feel that his noble penchant for humanizing sex workers in his films strays into some uncomfortable territory from a male-gaze perspective here, especially in the first half. Perhaps I harbor some amount of typical American prudishness, but I didn’t have these issues with Baker’s previous films Tangerine, The Florida Project, or Red Rocket, all of which explore their respective avenues of sex work. I’d say a second editing pass might have been in order.
Anora is certainly another stunner in Sean Baker’s impressive catalog, even if it feels like less than the sum of its parts. It’s straining for something it never quite reaches, but that strain is still enthralling to behold. | George Napper
