139 min | R | October 18, 2024 | Neon
Sean Baker makes his masterpiece. A Brooklyn stripper marries a Russian oligarch’s son and the fairy tale collapses in real time. Mikey Madison is extraordinary.
Anora works at a strip club in Brighton Beach. She speaks some Russian. A young client named Ivan is the son of a Russian oligarch and he is exactly what he looks like. Rich and childish and desperate for someone to want him for himself. They start spending time together. He pays her. The money is absurd. He proposes marriage in Las Vegas and she says yes because the fairy tale is right there and she wants it to be real. Then Ivan’s parents find out. They send enforcers to annul the marriage. The second half of the film is Anora fighting to hold onto something that was never hers. Sean Baker structures the film as a romantic comedy that becomes a hostage negotiation that becomes a tragedy. The tonal shifts are seamless and devastating.
Mikey Madison plays Anora with a ferocity that is the film’s heartbeat. She is tough and funny and resourceful and she fights for her marriage with a physical tenacity that is both heroic and heartbreaking. Madison makes every moment specific. The way she moves through the club. The way she negotiates money. The way she punches and kicks and screams when the enforcers arrive. This is not a victim. This is a woman who has been hustling her entire life and recognizes that this marriage is the hustle that could end all hustles. Mark Eydelshteyn plays Ivan as a spoiled child whose affection is genuine and whose commitment is nonexistent. Yuri Borisov plays Igor, one of the enforcers, with a quiet decency that becomes the film’s secret emotional weapon. Karren Karagulian plays the Armenian fixer Toros with exasperated comedy.
Baker shoots on 35mm film and the cinematography by Drew Daniels captures Brighton Beach and Manhattan with a texture that feels lived in. The club scenes are lit with neon warmth. The Las Vegas sequence is bright and giddy. The long night of the annulment negotiation is claustrophobic and frantic. Baker’s camera stays close to Anora’s face and Madison gives it everything. The editing by Baker himself is precise. The film runs over two hours and every scene earns its place. The sound design in the club sequences is immersive. The production design contrasts the cramped reality of Anora’s world with the cavernous emptiness of Ivan’s father’s townhouse.
Baker has been making films about sex workers and marginalized people for his entire career. Tangerine. The Florida Project. Red Rocket. Each film has expanded his scope and sharpened his craft. Anora is the culmination. The film loves its characters without sentimentalizing them. Anora is not a damsel. She is not a symbol. She is a person who saw an opportunity and took it and the world crushed her for it. The final shot is one of the most devastating images of the year. Baker holds on Madison’s face as something breaks that cannot be repaired. The fairy tale was always a lie. The feeling was always real. That contradiction is the film’s genius.