Anora, a Raucous Romantic Comedy, Is a Best Picture Contender With Bite
Forget any Pretty Woman comparisons. In Sean Baker’s brilliant film, Mikey Madison goes where Julia Roberts never could.
Mikey Madison is the sexy, sassy, sometimes scary engine of Anora.
Source: Neon
Sean Baker specializes in characters who are way out on the margins—trans sex workers in Tangerine (2015), down-and-out strippers in The Florida Project (2017), a porn-star antihero in Red Rocket (2021)—and completely immerses us in their degradations and titillations. There’s much pleasure to be found in his sharp, visceral films, but also a certain discomfort: Is it OK to laugh at this?
At the beginning of his latest film, Anora, Baker seems more eager than ever to cross lines. We follow his titular heroine, an Uzbeki American pole dancer (Mikey Madison) who mostly goes by Ani, into all sorts of hairy situations in various states of undress. Once she meets Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), a Russian oligarch’s demented 21-year-old son who sweeps her off her feet, we set aside our quibbles about whether Baker’s intention is to edify or titillate. Ani is on an adventure unlike anything we’ve ever seen in a movie, into power and pain and—after a giddy detour into absurdity—something approaching actualization.