Anora

Grade: A-

I have been to a strip club twice in my lifetime. I went to one for my bachelor party, because I’d heard that’s what you do, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do. My first visit to one, 4 years before that, was for the novelty, and because I could. I sat in the back at the bar, just wanting to watch. I did have a couple employees approach me and ask if I wanted something less public. I said “no thank you, I have a girlfriend, honestly I’m here because I’ve never been, I just turned 21, I’m just here to watch, etc.”

The title character in Anora is a worker at one of those establishments. She is played by Mikey Madison, in one of the best performances of the year – not just from an actress in a leading role, but by anyone. She provided a voice in 2019’s The Addams Family, and was one of many actors that I’m still discovering was in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood – but this will be her breakout role, to say the least. 

She goes by Ani. One night, Ivan comes in, requesting somebody who speaks Russian – so naturally, Russian-American Ani is up. Ivan is young. If he’s not the same age I was when I turned down a few Anis, he’s not too far away. He’s the son of a very rich and successful man (one of those “my dad is so-and-so, you can Google him” situations), so Ivan never has to work, and lives in a huge, lavish house. He offers to pay Ani to play his girlfriend for a week. It’s enough money to make her take a leave of absence from her usual place.

During this week, Ivan, Ani, and a few friends take a private plane to Las Vegas. It’s here where Ivan and Ani decide to get married. This is a good time to mention that Anora is directed by Sean Baker, who did my beloved The Florida Project. This is definitely from the director of The Florida Project. The filmmaking style is raw, crude, sometimes meandering, but always naturalistic. I think people who found the aforementioned film frustrating might appreciate Anora more. It has more of a forward-moving story. This is the kind of movie where there doesn’t seem to be any carefully planned out staging for the nudity, with blankets covering up body parts in just the right way, and the like. Whatever the camera happens to catch is what we see. In a scene where some intimate physical activity gets interrupted, Ivan’s boxer shorts clearly show he was quite interested in the task at hand.

I was thrown for a loop by the tonal shift in the second half. When Ivan disappears, and employees of the family come looking for him, and find his new wife in the house, it turns into a zany, madcap farce. Think of the sequence in Pulp Fiction where they suddenly need to clean a car stretched out to 50% of a movie. It’s never boring to watch, though. Anora is a pulsating, sexy, alive film. The Vegas scenes have a fun energy; I particularly liked the workers at the ice cream shop who take advantage of the fact that their boss, an elderly man, can’t hear or see well. And in the latter half, there’s a bit where something gross happens in a car. I don’t know why I laughed for so long, or at all, but it was my biggest laugh of the year.

Madison is electrifying in what must have been an exhausting performance. As Ivan, Mark Eydelshteyn is very funny when he speaks English. Though this isn’t the case, he sounds like someone who is reading the language and reciting it phonetically, but has no understanding or regard for what he’s saying. The dialogue is extremely spicy. If it does get Oscar nominations, I don’t know how they will possibly find any given clip that is suitable to show on regular TV.

I will have to go down the “Ending Explained” rabbit hole here. I’m not sure what we are supposed to get from the final scene. Whatever it means, it’s effective with the sound that continues through the credits. Anora is an exciting trip, nonetheless. Sean Baker needs to keep working.

Grade: A-