Movies can't, by definition, be all things to all people, and yet Anora -- winner of the Cannes Film Festival's highest honor, the Palme d'Or -- manages to vacillate between assorted registers with stunning, and ultimately affecting, aplomb.
Another of The Florida Project and Red Rocket writer/director Sean Baker's tales of marginalized individuals struggling to survive and find themselves in an often-unforgiving world, the film is a character study, romance, crime saga, screwball comedy, and vérité drama all wrapped into one unique and dexterous package. More impressive than its nimbleness, however, is its poise and empathy, the latter of which is chiefly bestowed upon its protagonist, whose life is thrown for a rollercoaster-grade loop-di-loop thanks to a chance introduction.
Ani (Mikey Madison, in a star-making turn) is a Brighton Beach 23-year-old who lives with her sister and earns a living stripping at a local club. Anora, which hits theaters Oct. 18, introduces her at the end of a long pan along a bench where men are receiving lap dances from erotic professionals. Fixating on Ani's face as she flashes the fake smile that her customers crave and her superiors demand, Baker's camera creates immediate, intimate engagement with the young woman, and that continues as it presents snapshots of her daily (or, rather, nightly) routine at her place of employment.
Trawling the floor trying to entice men to line her G-string with cash, smoking and gossiping on the sidewalk with her friend and colleague Lulu (Luna Sofía Miranda), and bickering in the crowded dressing room with her rival Diamond (Lindsey Normington), Ani is completely comfortable in these environs. For all the demeaning comments and questions she receives -- such as a client asking if her family knows what she does for a living -- she appears far happier here than anywhere else.
Because her grandmother was Uzbek and she speaks a little rusty Russian, Ani's boss Jimmy (Vincent Radwinsky) asks her to entertain Ivan (Mark Eidelshtein), an immature Russian playboy who woos her with bottles of booze and $100 bills. At the end of the evening, Ivan asks for her number, and the next day, she's invited to his home -- an opulent mansion that's protected by a gate and security guard and boasts an elevator, multiple lavish floors, and balcony views of the water.
Ani is naturally dazzled, and pinpoints Ivan as a potential sugar daddy whom she can milk for massive proceeds. That she does, although Ivan quickly escalates their relationship, beginning with an invitation to his "banging" New Year's Eve party. Before long, he's so smitten that he's striking a deal with her: Be his exclusive girlfriend for a week and he'll pay her $15,000. Unsurprisingly, she agrees.
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Ani understandably thinks she's struck it rich à la Pretty Woman and assumes her role as Ivan's plaything, complete with passionate sex that always seems, for her, like a performance. On a whim, the duo -- joined by Ivan's friends -- jet off to Vegas, where more debauchery causes Ani's head to spin and heart to, if not swoon, then at least soften.
When, while in bed, Ivan proposes to her, she initially takes it as a gag. However, he turns out to be sincere and they're promptly betrothed in the iconic Little White Wedding Chapel. Upon returning home, Ani packs her things from the club and dreams of a subsequent honeymoon at Walt Disney World with Cinderella -- a knowing wink to the decidedly fairy-tale nature of Baker's story.
A giant wedding ring and a fur coat later, Ani is fully ensconced in her new ritzy life. Alas, once rumors get out that Ivan has tied the knot with a lowly figure such as Ani, the boy winds up in big trouble with his powerful oligarch parents. Immediate responsibility for rectifying this mess falls to their minion Toros (Karren Karagulian), who bails on a baptism to deal with the problem once his own underlings Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov) fail to do the job.
Garnick and Igor's clownish attempts to contain Ivan (who runs away) and Ani (who wreaks havoc on them and the house) is the moment that Anora segues into a more overtly comical mode, marked by prolonged bouts of profanity-laced slapstick as Ani seeks to seize some control over her wayward circumstances. That's an impossible mission, as she's eventually compelled -- under tremendous duress -- to join Toros, Garnick, and Igor on a haphazard metropolitan search for Ivan before his imperious mother (Darya Ekamasova) and father (Aleksei Serebryakov) arrive in the morning to force the newlyweds to get their union annulled.
Baker blends chaotic insanity and farcical absurdity without ever losing sight of Ani, who remains front and center in his and cinematographer Drew Daniels' luminous and fluid widescreen frame. For all its pandemonium, Anora is constantly capturing shared looks, offhand remarks, and casual gestures that speak volumes about its characters.
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Ani is a whirlwind of calculated ambition and sentimental longing, always keen to the angles she must play in order to keep herself in a choice position, and yet also naïve enough to think that she can handle this mad situation. Madison has a ferocity that's at once genuine and a pose designed to mask frustration and desperation, and she plays Ani -- whose real name is Anora, which she tellingly dislikes -- as a force of nature who's nonetheless at the mercy of stormy criminal, economic, and social dynamics.
Anora grows a tad weary from Ani's protracted and futile efforts to locate Ivan and, once that's accomplished, to stave off permanent separation, and in its concluding third, it radiates a sorrow that's speaks to its underlying themes about work (and, in particular, sex work), exploitation, opportunism, and the possibility of happily-ever-afters.
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Once more shifting tones, Baker closes with a coda in which Ani, again facing a bitter reality, strives one last time for connection, only to discover -- with heartbreakingly raw tears -- that the primary things shared between those on the fringe are unhappiness and, worse still, hope that there's a better (magical) tomorrow waiting on the other side of today. Baker's love for these outcasts and lowlifes is as palpable as Ani's despair, and both shine through in Anora with a brightness befitting of its wild, anguished, alluring, unruly heroine.
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