Sean Baker seems to have a goal to shine a light on unacknowledged communities in the United States. His focus on sex workers, giving them inner lives and agency even if he’s having you watch them make insane decision after insane decision, is important for highlighting the humanity that oft goes ignored. Anora is the bildungsroman of a young exotic dancer, played to absolute perfection by Mikey Madison (Scream, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood). Less Little Women, more a little bit Zola, Anora dives down a dangerous rabbit hole by mixing sex and security in a blender, chugging it, and vomiting it all over the carpet in this sensitive-yet-sleazy thriller.
Not that Ani “Anora” Mikheeva (Madison) is sleazy. She’s a stripper at a high-dollar club in Brighton Beach, popular with the clientele and most of her co-workers. She knows her job is to manipulate men who are there with a variety of fantasies, often hiding from family or significant others in the tits of a dancer, and she’s great at it! Enter Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), child of a powerful Russian oligarch hiding in the States to play video games, do drugs, and fuck everything that moves before mommy and daddy make him work in the family business. He takes a liking to Ani and, after paying her for sex and increasing amounts of time, proposes in Vegas and sets off a chain of events that’ll leave you reeling by the time we cross the finish line.
Baker excels at creating scenarios that allow relatable characters to dive into increasingly poor decisions and shrinking the ground beneath their feet. Ani is a triumph for the writer/director, smart and driven despite being openly human and making compromising choices throughout. When Vanya’s parents decide they don’t like their prominent son marrying this woman their agents get involved with the couple, trying to keep them contained as increasingly hilarious hijinks ramp up from bad to worse to holy shit. Toros (Karren Karagulian) and his subordinate, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan), provide enough comedic relief to match Madison’s manic energy, but perhaps the true co-lead of this one emerges in Igor (Yura Borisov). Borisov is the one performer to truly contain grace, sweetness, sincerity, and dignity in the eyes and his quiet directness dances off of her screeching, clawing, biting, and desperate performance. The two are a powerhouse onscreen and their chemistry brings up every scene they interact in.
“Desperate” is definitely not a knock against Madison. It’s a description of Ani, who has a simmering fear under the surface of her confident and brash exterior. Ani secures the bag, only to be told it could be taken away at any minute, and her antagonistic relationships turn into loose truces and back again. She truly is unleashed in Anora, connecting with the character and audience to make for a career-defining performance. If I had to compare her to another actor I’d say Nicolas Cage. Weird, right? Not really, actually. Cage is fearless, and will give his all to any project and making decisions almost any other actor would be terrified to make. Madison is that level of fearless, holding nothing back and lending that same “anything goes” energy to performance that won’t work without it. From her opening dances to her final moment she’s just gripping (one COULD make a sex joke here, appropriately).
Strap in (on?) when you sit down for Anora because this is a horny-ass movie. Sure, it’s based in sex work, but that doesn’t always make for a sexy or horny movie. Anora makes room for it, allowing for sweeping romantic moments despite what’s all simmering under the surface, and while it doesn’t manage to make its sex feel sexy it manages to make its characters feel so. Madison drips confidence and sexy from every pore, almost like Ani’s life and security depend on it, but there’s also Vanya. He’ll do well with the “scrawny twinks” crowd. We also have Igor, a man with depth and layers to him that strip away as the movie runs on. Look, that’s hot, and I don’t make the rules on this one.
Anora is a blast from start to closing credits. I was cackling, grossed out, horrified ($87,000 to fix a pool because some dipshit wanted to go swimming in Kool-Aid!?), and quite moved. You get out of Anora what you bring in, but I think for so many it’ll be a turning point in how they view quite a bit. Sure, it’s a fun ride far more than it is a movie built to change the world, but I couldn’t get enough of it.
Anora is currently in theatres.
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