Winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Sean Baker’s Anora is a lively tour de force that hits in unexpected ways. Casting his empathetic gaze once again on society’s outcasts, the filmmaker flexes his creative muscles both thematically and stylistically to present a wonderous shapeshifting film. Baker makes it look effortless, but Anora is anything but simplistic.
The film is many things at once and yet so decisively unified. A Cinderella fairytale romance, Anora delicately shifts between comedy and drama. Baker’s overall strategy is brilliant, but especially so as he dextrously glides through slapstick into a thriller (with mafia overtones, no less) and then into something like an old-school arthouse psychological character study. None of this should work on paper, but in Baker’s hands, it’s pure magic.
Anora (Mikey Madison), or Ani as she prefers, is an exotic dancer living in New York City. She confidently strides through the club where she works, perfectly composed while presiding over her clients. One night, her boss introduces her to young Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), son of a Russian oligarch, who struggles with English. It turns out Ani is well-versed in the language.
But while Ani is very much in control of her life within the club, Ivan (a.k.a. Vanya) is a creature of impulse and urges. She becomes swept up in a whirlwind romance, charmed by both his innocence and carefree lifestyle. The unending supply of money at his fingertips is also a dream come true and marrying him makes life so much simpler and so much more fun.
Like all of Baker’s characters’, Anora is striving for better. This relationship is an easy fix to so many of her hardships. Not only does she not have to work anymore, but she gets to leave her dingy shared apartment in Brooklyn to live with Vanya in a mansion. She quits the job abruptly, packs her bags, and leaves all of that behind. She is free, or so she thinks.
Or doesn’t think. In shot after shot of them together, Anora stares off blankly as Vanya is engrossed in his video game, the only thing he is interested in besides her. This is brilliantly conveyed in a singular image repeated over and over again, and it’s telling. She is semi reclined on him as they sit on the couch while he is focused only on his TV. A thoughtful viewer can see that he is not even aware of her, and it seems curious that she is not cognizant of this fact. But this film is not about reality. It’s about that age old fantasy of being lifted out of poverty.
Baker has admitted the influence of Éric Rohmer, and he uses a dilemma typical of the director here – that of a character who as fallen into a trap from which she must escape. Anora and Vanya’s relationship was doomed from the start, not only due to their class differences but also because of their very different levels of maturity. Ani has had to take care of herself, to be practical, to work hard. Vanya doesn’t seem to have to do anything really, until his parents find out about the marriage. Now he must do what he is told.
Although it’s obvious from the start that reality was going to come crashing in to smash this fantasy, what’s so invigorating about Anora is the way that Baker sets the wheels in motion. Once Vanya’s parents decide to interfere in the marriage and send in their “fixers”, everything in this story changes. This is the point where the director incorporates a stylistic and genre blending mash-up that makes this film anything but predictable. Baker activates a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. It’s a surprisingly edge of your seat experience for what began as a romantic drama.
The filmmaker incorporates two very different visual strategies here too, ones that wouldn’t always mix in another director’s hands, but he makes it work. There’s a key scene where these family friends try to gain control of the situation (and of Ani foolishly, as they soon learn) in which rapid fire images mix with tension filled long shots of seemingly never-ending duration. Suddenly, Anora blends both thriller and slapstick. Flashing between the suspense and the hilarity, the film is a brilliant clash of tones that shouldn’t make sense but gleefully does.
For much of the film, Baker lovingly employs the close up, especially on Ani, and for good reason. The camera loves Mikey Madison, and she knows how to keep the look on her face enigmatic enough so as so draw the viewer in to try to understand what exactly is happening with her and why. Plus, despite her tough as nails exterior, Madison has an inviting, beaming countenance.
Mikey Madison must be given credit for the success of this film: she is capable of incredible nuance even as she is spewing invectives. She has an intoxicating determination that signals that she is fully in charge. In the later part of the film, as it seems as if Ani must surrender control, that seemingly impenetrable face shows remarkable courage.
In Anora, the viewer is drawn into the process of growth that this character undergoes. It happens over a short time span, but it is deeply impactful. The process can seem a bit jolting but then so is Ani’s behaviour most of the time. Nevertheless, it’s a life changing experience with an authentic edge. Anora does find a type of liberation – just not the one that she or the viewer could have expected. She has evolved and in such a way that her capacity for love and further life experience has been enriched.
