The opening shot of Sean Baker’s Anora finds the camera dollying along a row of champagne booths at a strip club, clinically observing a scene of stylish debauchery. The music is loud, the light is low, and the exotic dancers are gyrating with plastered smiles, pantomiming their pleasure while internally checking their watch. Given that this display is preceded by an austere title card informing audiences that the film has received one of the most prestigious prizes in cinema (the Palme d’Or at Cannes), you might think that the ensuing picture will be a squalid story of misery and disenchantment—an exposé revealing the predatory nature of the strip-club industry and the meager circumstances of the women whom it chews up and spits out. Surely this widely acclaimed and undoubtedly serious movie can’t be… fun?
But Baker, continuing his hot streak in the wake of The Florida Project and Red Rocket, demolishes his viewers’ assumptions as cannily as he develops his characters. It is true that Anora is a thoughtful and incisive work, exploring its drably decadent milieu with persuasive rigor. It is also, by and large, a blast—a ribald comedy that hums with playfulness and dynamism. It turns you on and pulls you in.
That aforementioned strip club is called Headquarters, and one of its most alluring attractions is Ani (Mikey Madison), who in the movie’s early scenes effortlessly prowls the establishment’s tables and convinces thirsty men to pay her for a private dance. In some ways, Ani hails from the typical Baker lineage: Much like Bria Vinaite’s homebound escort in The Florida Project and Simon Rex’s disgraced porn star in Red Rocket, she’s cash-strapped and hotheaded, yet also enterprising and vivacious. But she is younger than her cinematic forebears, and she conducts herself with the confidence of a woman whose future still lies ahead of her. The drudgery of the real world hasn’t snuffed out her innate vibrancy just yet.
The adage that “sex work is work” may have descended into cliché, but Anora depicts the transactional nature of Ani’s occupation with gratifying frankness, along with more than a hint of warmth. Ani doesn’t have any delusions about job security, and she occasionally squabbles with a management that treats her as a fungible commodity rather than a valued employee. (When her boss complains that she isn’t sticking to their agreed-upon schedule, she responds, “No problem, just give me workers’ comp, health insurance, and a 401k.”) But she also has fairly cordial relationships with most of her coworkers, and even the johns whose laps she swivels on seem to regard her with respect. There are no scenes of customers getting handsy, and while such omissions are arguably an oversight on Baker’s part, I prefer to think of it as a kindness. Rather than wallowing in the sex trade’s grime, he and Madison emphasize Ani’s independence, presenting her as an assertive young woman who’s good at her job, even if she—like the rest of us in the workforce—yearns for something more.
That something potentially arrives in the form of Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the boisterous scion of a Russian magnate who stumbles into Headquarters and earnestly requests the company of a beauty who speaks his native tongue, which Ani—whose proper name gives the film its title (its English translation is revealed later)—just so happens to be fluent in. He invites her to his palatial estate, and while their quasi-courtship is certainly enthusiastic (they fuck in pretty much every room in the house), it initially remains a product of negotiation; when he asks her to attend a New Year’s Eve party, she purrs, “I have holiday rates.” Yet Ani seems to genuinely like this (extremely) rich, extravagant goofball—after they have sex on the couch and he returns to playing videogames, she courteously informs him that he still has 45 minutes left on the hour he booked her for, at which point he immediately climbs back on top of her—and following an impromptu trip to Vegas, their relationship shifts from professional to marital.
And then… well, then things get complicated.
The centerpiece of Anora is a lengthy, chaotic sequence in Vanya’s mansion, when three of his father’s associates—a trio of hapless grunts, perfectly played by performers I’ve never heard of (Vache Tovmasyan, Yura Borisov, and Karren Karagulian, the last of whom has appeared in all of Baker’s features)—attempt to subdue Ani, only to discover that they’re meddling with a tiger. Baker isn’t a flashy visual stylist, but his command during this scene is invisibly masterful, with blocking and editing that position his actors with deceptive precision. It is also riotously funny, with an escalating, nigh-musical sense of mayhem that methodically builds to a pitch of delirious farce. (Imagine the Big Kahuna scene from Pulp Fiction, only if the poor sap on the couch were the smartest and most ferocious person in the room.)
Anora doesn’t sustain that level of energy for its entire 139-minute runtime. Its basic plot is somewhat rudimentary, and there are moments during its second half when its pace can feel a little shaggy. That said, simply spending time with these characters is rewarding, both for the tartness of their dialogue and the hidden sincerity of their desires.
The residents who populate a Sean Baker picture might be perceived as losers, with their modest means and their narrow aims. But Baker is an enormously empathetic filmmaker, and he imbues everyone in Anora with a bone-deep dignity. Vanya may present as a capricious hedonist, but he is really just a scared little boy, and there is a sadness to the way he recedes when faced with real problems. The men who surround him are pathetic goons, yet they’re essentially middle managers who are merely trying to do their boss’ bidding and get through the day. Even the bit players—Vanya’s rambunctious friends, Ani’s supportive colleagues—feel like fully realized people with their own off-screen lives.
And then there is Anora herself. With her wide mouth and pronounced Brooklyn accent, Madison has a commanding presence, and she lends Ani a fiery bravado that makes her seem invulnerable. Until, that is, the movie’s astonishing final scene, during which she lets slip her cocksure mask and thrusts her heretofore jubilant audience into a state of rapt, reverent silence. Baker has pulled off this particular magic trick before; the ending of The Florida Project is among the greatest of the new millennium, and the climax of Red Rocket isn’t far off. Here, he downshifts into a different register, conveying the weight of his heroine’s journey through intimate, devastating quiet. Ani may spend much of the movie in varying states of undress, but it isn’t until the last frame that she finally bares her soul.
Grade: A-
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.