David R. Walker

Archive for February 4th, 2025

Anora

Director: Sean Baker

Cast: Mikey Madison, Yura Borisov, Lindsey Normington, Mark Eydelshteyn, Vache Tomasyn, Karren Karagulian

Running time: 2 hours and 19 minutes

Film Rating: 9 out of 10

Tangerine and The Florida Project director Sean Baker returns with the utterly dazzling film Anora featuring a standout frenetic and motor mouth performance by Mikey Madison as Ani a wisecracking Manhattan lap dancer who gets naively embroiled in the romantic life of a young Russian playboy Ivan played by Russian actor Mark Eydelshteyn. In fact Ivan is only 21 years old and a complete hedonist and party animal who falls for Anora and offers her enough cash to be his girlfriend for a week.

Sean Baker’s first part of Anora feels like a frenetic drug induced orgy of pop music, drinking, laptop dancing and lots of vigorous sex. As Anora and Ivan fall supposedly in love, Ivan withholds how influential and wealthy his Russian parents really are. Ivan lives in a massive mansion owned by his father in Brighton Beach in the Russian community of New York.

Anora’s dream of falling in love with a rich prince that can whisk her away to Vegas seems to come true. As they party and frequent all the glittering temptations of Vegas, they impulsively decided to get married in Vegas without informing Ivan’s parents.

Written and directed by Sean Baker, Anora is like Pretty Woman on acid, a hooker love story with enough lap dancers thrown in plus a cat fight to make this film truly entertaining and utterly watchable for all the crazy antics.

Then in a deftly crafted change of pace, the hedonist partying comes to an end when Ivan’s parents discover that their spoilt rich son has married a foul-mouthed hooker from Manhattan.

Into the fray are sent to Russian tough guys, Yura Borisov as Igor, who is exceptional in this role and Paul Weissman as Nick in which they try to tame Anora in the Russian billionaire’s plush mansion. A scene so explosive and almost comical that it is absolutely riveting.

Sean Baker loves to explore the dark frayed edges of humanity, the ugly and steamy side of sex, shady prostitution and how money plays a pivotal role in power dynamics within a decadent society. What Anora also does so beautifully is to show how Ivan just treats her as a female plaything until his parents fly in from Moscow to attempt to get the marriage annulled.

In between all the chaos and the amazing acting, is Igor, a quietly spoken Russian man who’s only desire is to really protect Anora from this ruthless excessive family and while she initially dismisses Igor as just another kind idiot, she soon discovers an unexpected saviour.

Anora is perfectly filmed and directed, a Cinderella love story told in reverse with a feisty heroine who battles her way through a world of competitive sleaze, highlighting with illumination how an immigrant community can hang onto the shredded scraps of the dystopian American dream.

Experience Anora, watch Anora, it is truly a revelatory film and deserved the Palm d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Anora is not for the faint hearted but it is a viciously taut tale of one girl’s survival in the face of adversity, mistrust while battling her own conception that her sole purpose in life is just to please men.

Superbly acted by Mikey Madison and Yura Borisov, Anora is highly recommended viewing for mature audiences who appreciate a gut wrenching ending.

Anora gets a film rating of 9 out of 10. Utterly compelling and crazy. See it to believe it.