Anora (2024 | USA | 140 minutes | Sean Baker)
Sean Baker launches a rocketship of delirious romance that can’t possibly last when a private dancer lands the ultimate girlfriend experience with a fun young Russian oligrarch’s heir. In this case, it’s Ani (short for Anora) an erotic dancer in a decently upscale Manhattan club who’s played with tremendous depth and magnetic dexterity by Mikey Madison. In an opening sequence that brings us through the club floor, birthday dances, VIP experiences, and the chatter in the dressing room among the dancers — with their friendships and petty rivalries — we get a sense of the whole scene. As in so many of his films with their focus on sex-workers, Baker doesn’t approach these women with lurid pity, but as people with the skills and talent to make her living in a difficult industry among consenting adults.
On this particular night, Ani’s dinner break is cut short by her boss’s demand that she and the conversational Russian she picked up from her grandmother chat up a wealthy kid named Vanya with more money than he knows what to do with. Played by Mark Eydelshteyn, in a goofy and phenomenal debut from a newcomer who’s never going to shake the “Russian Timmy Chalamet” rap, he’s instantly delighted by Ani. There’s no sex in the champagne room, but even though this kid is twenty-one going on thirteen he knows to ask if Ani does any work outside the club.
From the moment she puts her number in his phone, and she rolls up to his (father’s) palatial Sheepshead mansion, we’re right with them on a breakneck pace of falling into something. Vanya’s an idiot who strips his clothes and does a naked backward somersault onto his read velvet sheets before Ani gives him the “a little bit of everything” package, but he’s also really cute enough to make his silly attempts at American idioms seem charming. She’s back the next day for a private dance and a gently encouraging reminder that he only used fifteen minutes of his time, bunny-rabbit style, but the care with which she handles it speaks to a true professional.
Madison plays twenty-three-year-old Ani as at least slightly wise beyond her years; she knows her worth, but hasn’t yet become jaded by her work. Rendered in candy-colored cinematography, the opening act conveys the joys of being young, rich, and horny. Ani’s smart, but a run of banging parties, Coney Island candy shops, a spontaneous private jet getaway to a fully-stocked Vegas suite, and an ill-advised proposal has even her setting aside her sensibilities and buying into the fantasy of something more. By the time the soundtrack drops the needle on Robin Schultz & Callum Scott’s ebullient electro rework of “Greatest Day” as the young couple celebrates under digital fireworks of the Fremont Street Experience (Downtown Las Vegas has never looked more romantic or less sad) you’re right with Ani as she falls for the lottery ticket fantasy of spending her life fucking a scrawny billionaire whose days are otherwise occupied by weed, video game missions, and avoiding returning to work for his father’s nefarious enterprise.
Before domestic bliss can set in, though, there’s an inevitable crash back to reality when news of their union gets back to mother Russia. When the grown ups arrive in the form of a trio of fixers (Karren Karagulian as a high-ranking Armenian on perpetual babysitting duty, Vache Tovmasyan as his hapless helper, and a wonderful Yura Borisov as the on-call gold-hearted gopnik goon), that the mode of the film takes a gigantic sideways swerve from euphoria to an Uncut Gems level pressure cooker. The film finds heartbreaking comedy in their manic high-stress quest through Brighton Beach to undo the idiocies of a runaway rich kid with no concern for the consequences of his actions. Throughout, Baker’s sympathies lie among the working stiffs left to tidy-up gargantuan messes for feckless oligarchs. Over a twenty-four hour crash, their cruel indifference becomes more evident in the cold light of day. Everyone in the cast is great, but Mikey Madison is a force of nature. From her first dance to an unshakeable last scene, she gives us the whole world.
Anora arrives in Seattle theaters on November 1
An earlier version of this review ran when Anora had its US Premiere at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival.