Overview
A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.
A spellbinding performance by Mikey Madison as Ani, a dancer caught on a love, power and self discovery whirlwind in Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winning triumph. A riotous, unapologetically combative mashup of humor and heartbreak, Baker’s film puts the 22-year-old filmmaker on the map as one of the boldest voices in modern moviemaking.
A Complex Protagonist: Ani’s World Unveiled
Like it is chaotic, Ani’s world is very complex. Known formally as Anora but more affectionately called Ani, she straddles two identities: a dancer by profession, with a taste for English and a sometimes murkier weave of sex work. Ani is a paradox: an intelligent woman, a fierce intelligence forced to operate in a house built on her contradictions. But Baker goes beyond the paint of her flaws: he revels in them, which makes her not only relatable but amazing.
This is a modern age Screwball Cinderella Story.
Anora is a gritty, screwball comedy version of the Cinderella story. Known for offering such previous works as Tangerine and The Florida Project, Baker pushes the stakes in this New York’s based drama. Ani’s life is captured by the film with unflinching honesty, and irreverent humor, the film moves with frenetic energy.
This narrative is built on Mikey Madison. At just 25, deep emotional depth made her Ani portrayal a masterclass. But she captures that beauty and messiness, and performs it in a raw, fearless, love-to-loathe-her way that you won’t soon forget.
Ani and Vanya: the Unlikely Pairing
Mark Eidelstein plays Vanya at the center of Ani’s chaotic life in an endearing sort of awkwardness. Vanya is the quintessential “rich kid”: gawky son of a Russian oligarch whose vast wealth is at the heart of his dangerous blows. Vanya and Ani have a transaction relationship and,Ani, whose girlfriend is Vanya, agrees to put on a show for a week for $15,000. In a turn of candor, Ani breaks out into a moment of humor and says, if they had offered her $10,000, she would have done it, Vanya reveals he would have even taken $30,000.
This set up serves to build that balance between business and romance and illusion and authenticity. Their chemistry is undeniable, their connection is transactional. Vanya’s life is sheltered, and offers Ani nothing, but she brings grit and spark. He gives her a brief taste of stability, however, shaky as the foundation of that stability.
A Wedding and Its Aftermath
Their Las Vegas wedding is champagne and cocaine, live and wild. It wears off, and reality comes crashing in. Ani’s raw vulnerability shows and then Vanya’s immaturity. It is brutal, and Ani catches the most of the fall.
A Tragicomic Journey Through The Underbelly Of New York
They were a love letter to New York’s chaotic beauty: Ani’s journey from around midtown Manhattan to the snow flavored beaches of Coney Island. Ani’s life is a tumult, the city is a character unto itself, vibrant and gritty, as would be fitting for a city, also as Ani. Baker toggles between moments that are tawdry with fantasy, but also harsh reality, that make for an unpredictable, compulsive story.
It’s a film that lambastes Hollywood’s infatuation with happy endings in favour of a naked and unashamed story. Ani is not your passive Cinderella who must wait to be rescued, she’s a wrecking ball, crushing aside societal norms, trying to destroy the expectations for women.
A Breath Taker Climax
Surrounding the film’s climax, which takes place at Vanya’s swanky mansion, is a dazzling and one of the film’s best set pieces. Ani underestimates their own ferocity when two bumbling Russian enforcers show up to anul the marriage. That leads into a chaotic, slapstick brawl where Ani won’t be pushed aside. This is savage and hilarious and utterly captivating, Baker’s way of orchestrating controlled chaos.
The Final Act is Uncomfortable Truths
But in a story that hurtles toward its finish, Baker won’t provide easy answers. So lovely to leave matters sitting as they do by losing interest, trading away desire, and the performers abiding, for the last act is unsettling: a deliberate critique of our transactional relations and of the performative, of life itself. Like the audience, Ani tries to sort through reality from facade, only there aren’t any answers.
Triumph of Modern Filmmaking
Cinematic triumph that premièred at Cannes and won the Producers Guild’s prestigious Palme d’Or – ‘Anora’ is a Cannes film. Some initial viewing moments of jarring and contrived quality but the film works so hard to tell a layered story they reveal their brilliance on reflection. Baker asks viewers to look at these truths straight on — one that lasts beyond the final frame.
Mikey Madison’s Career-Defining Role
Another revelation: Mikey Madison’s Ani. Ani is one of the most compelling heroines I remember reading in recent memory and she is captured unflinching honesty. Anora makes “Anora” into a modern masterpiece not just a bold experiment.
Anora is film that defies expectations, the humor, the heartbreak with biting social commentary all served up in a story as inherently messy and beautiful as being alive. This is a film that rips and needs to be seen at the same time that it needs to be felt, which is to say with Mikey Madison’s powerhouse performance at its core.