ANORA - Mark Reviews Movies

Anora, Neon

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 31, 2024

Anora plays like a modern-day fairy tale about a stripper and sex worker who hits the jackpot with a young and inexperienced man of considerable wealth, and then it very much doesn't play that way. The film becomes a raucous comedy about a night across New York City, in which Ani (Mikey Madison), the aforementioned woman, has to find the guy who said he loves her for a reason that would probably be better for her if he just stayed away and was never found again.

This is the new film from writer/director Sean Baker, who has made a career of stories about the outcasts of society and the ways in which they scrape by a living through whatever means are available to them. Here, the main character isn't as unique or compelling as the ones from the filmmaker's previous efforts, but we can overlook that, simply because Baker is operating in a different mode than usual and Madison possesses such a strong presence as someone who's willing to do just about anything to prevent the loss of the potentially good life she suddenly has in front of her. Ani is a lot to handle, and we like her for that and get a kick out of seeing so many people realize just how unprepared they are for her.

The story begins at the strip club where Ani works, dancing for tips and taking certain customers to private rooms where the rules of the joint don't have to apply and the money is better. It's not enough for any kind of life other than this, though, because Ani still lives in an apartment with a roommate and doesn't seem to have much to do outside of work. It's not as if the owner of the club is going to be offering benefits, paid time off, or a pension plan anytime soon, if ever, so she keeps going without looking back or, for that matter, forward.

As luck—or misfortune, depending on how all of this goes—would have it, Ani speaks Russian, having learned it from a grandmother who never bothered with English, and one night at the club, a young man of some means from Russia comes in looking for a good time. Ani gives him one, and Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) is so taken by Ani that he invites her to his mansion. He's so satisfied with that experience—despite or because of how quickly it goes—that he keeps having her over, and he becomes so smitten with Ani that he offers to pay her $10,000 if she'll be his girlfriend for a week. Always savvy about what she wants and what other people are willing to give, Ani asks for $15,000, and he accepts before pointing out he would have paid twice her asking offer.

It's difficult to say that this is a legitimate fairy tale. Baker doesn't seem the type to indulge in that kind of fantasy, and sure enough, the whirlwind relationship between Ani and Ivan, which goes from plenty of sex and lounging around with recreational drugs in the mansion to more sex and drugs in a hotel suite in Las Vegas, doesn't especially look like a love story. Sure, Ivan says he thinks he's falling in love with Ani after she takes control in bed one time, and when he spontaneously proposes to her, Ani is quick enough to say yes—after making certain he knows the smallest size of diamond she wants on her engagement ring.

The whole thing is transactional, because that's what these two characters know—just at different levels of and a greater disparity between the usual amounts involved in those transactions. Ivan, as it turns out, is the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch, who wants his child to start working in the family business, and his expedition in New York is a last-ditch form of rebellion against living the way his parents want him to. Ani just happened to be in the right place—or the wrong one—at the right—or wrong—time, and when they do marry at a little chapel in Vegas, they're at least honest about what they want from each other, even if neither says it directly.

All of it goes wrong for the two, though, when a chain of assorted handlers get word of Ivan's marriage to his parents. They want the marriage annulled and Ivan returned to Russia, and that's when Ani has to start fighting—literally at times—for the kind of deal that will probably never come her way again—and for Ivan, of course, even if the young man has no clue how to stand up for himself, let alone his wife.

The resulting comedy isn't really about Ani or Ivan or the three goons (played by Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, and a quietly amusing Yura Borisov) sent to take care of the marriage and retrieve the oligarch's son. It's all about a string of escapades, going around the city to find Ivan, who has literally run away from all of his responsibilities. It's funny because of the energy Baker, as well as the actors, brings the material and the fact that these characters are so quickly but firmly established by the screenplay, as well as—again—the performers.

There's not much depth to it, even though Baker does attempt to bring the story back to Ani, what her life is, and how her situation might be partly of her own doing by the end. In that way, Anora is slightly disappointing, coming from a filmmaker capable of much more than a comedic lark, but for what it's trying to do, the film is still entertaining.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products