I stood nearly three hours in line to catch Sean Baker's much-talked-about Cannes Palme d'Or-winning, festival darling, and most likely soon-to-be Academy favorite, Anora. Funnily enough, in tandem with this, this piece too has waited to emerge. Not only was the film burdened with the word that preceded it, but three hours’ worth of patience and the reviewing simmered in months of it not leaving me since walking out of the closing screening of MAMI 2024. This is the sixth addition to the sub-genre Baker has carved with his fascinatingly niche filmography set in the world of sex workers. That alone adds enough expectation. We've seen him do this five times—will the sixth be the time his charm dissipates? What's new? This, as the trailer aptly outlines, is a love story.
Love is intimate. Anora "Ani" Mikheeva (Mikey Madison), a Brooklyn stripper and sex worker, is in the business of intimacy. Ani’s folly is that she mistakes one for the other when Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), the brat son of a Russian oligarch, sweeps into her life with a whirlwind romance offering a happily ever after. In her world, happy endings are reserved for the buyer. Her days begin late and stretch into the early hours of the next morning in a dimly lit, deafening New York strip club. The opening credits establish the transactional spaces strip clubs are, where her body is spent. Ani is among a series of topless women grinding on the laps of fully clothed men. Next, she is scouting for another man to dance for, and the night goes on. The girls must maintain appearances—the illusion that they are enjoying it too must not be broken—the customer is king. When Vanya, the Russian “royalty,” visits, Ani is assigned the task of serving him because she can speak his tongue. The charm of accents and flirtatious conversations in a botched second language is what makes the ‘love story’ in this film. Her rudimentary Russian is as captivating to Vanya as Madison's brash Brooklyn accent is to the viewer. When it collides with the childlike nonchalance, oblivious of consequences, that Vanya epitomises—and which Eydelshteyn brings to the character with ease—sparks fly.
They both want to escape their realities and see a way out together. A green card marriage for Vanya, a Cinderella story for Ani—a disaster for the Zakharovs. When the young, very new lovers get married on a whim while on one of Vanya’s lavish getaways to Las Vegas, all hell breaks loose. I don’t usually recommend watching trailers, but go watch Anora’s. It embodies the chaos that engulfs this film whole and catches one off guard. As soon as the news of the wedding reaches Russia, the film reveals its footing in the good old screwball comedy genre of the ’40s, and we meet Vanya’s local guardian and his two henchmen. This is also perhaps where one finds the answer to what won Baker the highest honour at one of the most sought-after film festivals in the world. This one’s a genre-bender—a screwball tragedy, if you will.
Andrew Sarris describes screwball comedies as “sex comedies without sex,” as stated in almost every source I looked up to learn more about the hit but short-lived genre of nascent Hollywood. Under the censoring fist of the Hays Code, implemented in 1934, and from a country in the grim grips of economic depression, emerged lighter films with escapist settings, quickly escalating farcical plots, lived by unlikely pairs often from different classes, who bantered their way to happy, romantic endings and dominated the box office in the 1930s and ’40s. The locking of heads sheltered sexual tension that needed a new home. The trendsetter was Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934), which became the first of only three films to have won the Big Five Oscars. Baker takes all of this and plants it unabashedly, first in the world of sex, vulgarity, and profanity, and second in a world far more real than the genre is used to. With six nominations, Anora too stands a chance of sweeping the Oscars like its inspirator.
The different worlds of the rich and the poor often collide in screwball comedies, frequently critical of the out-of-touch nature of the rich. The sharpness of Baker’s criticism turns into Ani’s tragedy. Vanya goes missing at accountability's first knock. If there is a defence, it is that his guardian barges in, banging on their doors, and Vanya is a spoiled 22-year-old man-child scared of his father. Throughout their rushed, ephemeral romance, he emphasises his family's ‘powerful’ background—danger lurks as subtext. Given what anything Russian connotes in an American pop-cultural context, one is certain something very wrong is going to happen to Ani. It doesn't. At least, not in a bloody, murderous way one is led to believe. The film adopts a levity that only exists in the world of the rich. It is absurd how inconsequential one becomes upon brushing against this world. It is perhaps this that suspends the weight of it all mid-air amidst the wild goose chase for Vanya. When the humorous hunt ends, nearly towards the very end of this tight coil of a script, the cruelty of it all sinks in all at once.
Anora is one of those films to be watched for the last scene. A scrutiny of intimacy rewardingly awaits you, aptly placed in a car in the middle of heavy snowfall. The proficiency of the actors in frame, Drew Daniels’ camerawork crafting intimacy between the film and the viewer, and Baker’s raw writing elevate Anora from a film you had a great time with to a film you can’t stop thinking about.
About the Reviewer:
Prakhar Patidar is an independent cinema and culture researcher, exploring the dynamic intersection of academia and practice. Recipient of the Rama Mehta Writing Grant 2022, a Jio MAMI Young Critics Lab 2023 fellowship, and an ARCUREA 2024 fellowship, her recent engagements include an IFA-funded project on WCC, programming for ALT EFF 2024, collaborating on documentary projects with Fazeli Films, and contributing to Cut, and Print!