'Anora' Review: Mikey Madison's Audrey Hepburn Moment
Sean Baker's latest is a sly, sexy screwball comedy for the modern era
There’s a moment in director Sean Baker’s Anora wherein all the assembled characters are placed in front of a judge. As they beg him to listen to their story and, more importantly, believe what they’re saying is true, they’re also yelling at each other. It’s a scene that could easily play in the 1940s work of Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks. It’s a moment of pure screwball comedy that elevates Sean Baker’s film from well-made sex comedy to comedic classic.
Anora starts in a somewhat similar way to Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, in that a boppy needle drop underscores the film’s images and sets up the theme that is to follow. In Fennell’s case, it was Charlie XCX’s infectious “Boys” played over gyrating old men, the song’s fantasy world of daydreaming about boys slamming against the reality of what women usually encounter.
With Anora it’s Take That, Robin Schulz and Calum Scott’s “Greatest Day,” a peppy celebratory song of hope that plays as men spend their almighty dollar for the pleasurable company of a nude woman grinding and dancing on them. It’s a song that, in a way, becomes Anora’s theme. Every day is great, but today could be the ultimate.
Anora, in this case, is really Ani (Mikey Madison), a Brooklyn-accented exotic dancer and sex worker. While at the club Ani is the requisite good-time party girl, chewing gum and blowing bubbles while giving lap dances and finding any excuse she can to get a guy to the ATM. When her evening is over, Ani turns in her pumps and g-string for a heavy jacket and beanie, to go home and sleep until it all starts over again. Much has been said about Madison’s performance and every superlative is warranted. There are two women inhabiting her performance: the sex-pot Ani and the strong-willed Anora, the latter subsumed and hidden away.
Madison’s wide smile and accent give off Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny vibes or Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. But it’s easy to see this role as Madison’s Roman Holiday. Like that film, Ani goes on a madcap adventure, only to question whether romantic love is truly enough. And like Audrey Hepburn, Madison has to grapple with the two sides to her persona: the real her in Anora and the fake her in Ani. It’s a performance for the ages, worthy of study, it’s that good.
When she meets the quirky Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), a Russian transplant with seemingly unlimited funds the two spark an immediate connection and soon embark on a hedonistic, highly sexual romance. Ivan has a similar split in his personality when he’s with Ani, telling her to call him Vanya. But where Ani is tamped down to get what she wants out of Vanya, it’s easy to see the glimmers of how she really feels. Madison will roll her eyes or register her boredom as her and Ivan spend their days having quick, unsatisfying (for her) sex, and watching him play video games. She is forced to stroke his ego constantly, telling him “You’re like funny cool.”
Eydelshteyn is just as perfectly suited for the role of Vanya as Madison is. He’s a man-child who understand that when his awkward charm isn’t enough that money will suffice. And yet it’s remarkably easy to see why Ani would want to be with Ivan. He says “I think we would have a great time even if I didn’t have money,” and that’s true (to an extent) because Eydelshteyn plays Ivan like a boy in need of mothering, lusting for a friend who will see him as a person. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t complicit in his own destruction, berating a manager at a Vegas hotel for not having his suite available (“You mean I have to fucking wait?”) or partying so excessively the help requires extra tips.
A trashy Vegas wedding soon transpires — shoutout to costume designer Jocelyn Pierce whose costumes are exquisite — but when Vanya’s family becomes hellbent on getting it annulled he cuts and runs, leaving Ani to handle the mess. After an extremely wild first half, Anora slows down and settles into a screwball comedy of errors as Ani goes on a search for Vanya, accompanied by his parent’s two henchmen Toros (Karren Karagulian) and Igor (Yura Borisov). The chaos doesn’t dampen once Vanya and Ani are separated, but there is a slow-down in narrative as Ani, Igor and Toros engage in a hilariously extended fight sequence and are forced to travel the streets to find Vanya.
Karagulian and Borisov are manic in their own way. Where Ani and Vanya’s relationship is a whirlwind, Toros and Igor hope to contain whatever explosion could result through a bumbling mix of (what they believe to be) fear and intimidation. Madison and Borisov are all subtlety in their interactions after an initial fight scene that is intense as it is side-splitting. Borisov makes Igor curious about who Ani is, and if this were any other type of film you’d be hoping a genuine love triangle would develop which, thankfully, Baker eschews. Karagulian also mines humor from Toros’ chronic misunderstanding of Gen Zers today, coupled with the film’s incisive look at class. At the end of the day, Toros just wants to keep his job.
Like all of Baker’s previous work, there’s a stark look at class found within the fun and drama of Anora that hits you with a wallop, particularly in the film’s final frames. Ani tells her strip club friends that she dreams of staying in the “Cinderella suite” during her honeymoon with Vanya and, for a generation who have grown up on the most famous sex worker fairytale, Pretty Woman, it’s hard not to want the same for Ani. But as the movie lays bare during the fraught climax, Vanya is no different from the other strippers at the club, he just sells it better. As Blondie sings in the film’s trailer, “dreaming is free” but it doesn’t pay the bills.
Anora is a movie that wraps you up in its fun, pop-tinged fur coat and, by the end, leaves its soul exposed. Mikey Madison is bound for superstardom and the rest of the cast is able to keep up with her. This is one you’ll want to see again and again.
Grade: A
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