The first sign that you are watching a Sean Baker film is how each film is opened, which begins with the use of a known pop song during the opening credits. From The Florida Project that uses “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang, to Red Rocket’s use of “Bye Bye Bye” by NSYNC, these needle drops tell you that you are going to have a good time. And with Baker’s latest film, Anora, which opens with Robin Schulz’s remix of the Take That song “Greatest Day”, a fun time you will have.
Mikey Madison plays Anora “Ani” Mikheeva, a young stripper living in Brighton Beach, a Russian-speaking neighborhood in Brooklyn. As the only stripper in her upscale Manhattan strip club who speaks Russian, her boss introduces her to Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eidelstein), the dissolute and immature son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. What starts off as paid sexual encounters, a romance blooms between Ani and Vanya, and during a trip to Las Vegas, they decide to marry in a small Vegas wedding chapel.
The Florida Project is perhaps the closest companion Anora has with any of Baker’s previous movies, in that both films have this strange relationship with fairy tales given their down-to-earth locations, with the former being told through a child’s perspective in a budget motel near Walt Disney World. In the case of Anora, there is a Cinderella theme throughout the narrative that centers on a young woman feeling unhappy with her life and looking for a way out, and her Prince Charming comes in the shape of Vanya, whose spoiled brat persona shines throughout.
For the first hour, Anora showcases the excitement of young, reckless love, ranging from frequent sex scenes between Ani and Vanya, to them and his friends partying all over the place, climaxing with the wedding where “Greatest Day” is played once again. Shot in 35mm, Drew Daniels’s cinematography shines throughout these sequences, showcasing the glitz and glamor of nighttime Las Vegas.
However, when a home invasion occurs in Vanya’s mansion, that’s when Ani’s fairy tale starts to fall apart when she finds herself in a complicated family situation where the childish and thoughtless Vanya flees on foot, leaving Ani to deal with the fallout. For the rest of the film, Ani is in the company of the Armenian handler Toros (Karren Karagulian) and his two henchmen as all four drive around Brooklyn looking for Vanya.
So much of the second act is played for laughs that wouldn’t far off from a screwball comedy, leading to one catastrophe to another, with Karren Karagulian – a frequent collaborator on Baker’s films – is in top comedic form as a frustrating handler who is constantly dissing the younger generation for not allowing him to do his job. Serving as his own editor, Baker does indulge too much with the frequent location hopping and the chaos that ensues, which doesn’t justify the 139-minute running time.
What ultimately holds the film together is Anora herself. Having been impressed by her performances in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and 2022’s Scream, Baker wrote the titular role for Mikey Madison, who dominates by playing a brassy sex worker, a recurring protagonist in Baker’s filmography. Throughout the film, Ani gets discriminated for her occupation and thus she maintains her tough exterior to maintain her stance as she tries to prove those around her that she is a devoted wife to Vanya, even if she doesn’t quite see the obvious truth in front of her. What could have been an unlikeable protagonist, Madison makes her a captivating figure, especially Ani slowly learns the reality of the situation, leading to the film’s final heartbreaking minute.
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