Director: Sean Baker
Starring: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Aleksei Serebryakov, Darya Ekamasova
Certificate: 18
Run Time: 139 mins

Anora is the new film by Sean Baker and it won the Palme D’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Anora ‘Ani’ Mikheeva (Mikey Madison) works as a stripper in Brooklyn – so far, so Sean Baker. Since she has Russian heritage, her boss and introduces her to Ivan ‘Vanya’ Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), the 21-year-old son of a Russian oligarch. Although Vanya is supposed to be in the US to study, he prefers to be unruly by playing videogames, getting drunk and high every second of the day in his family’s mansion. He quickly takes a shine to Anora, paying her $15,000 for her to stay with him for a week. Things begin to escalate. 

Other than Mikey Madison’s fantastic performance, I found the first 45 minutes of Anora really testing. I hated Vanya and his similarly childish friends who run around clubs, bars and hotels as if they own the place, wreaking destruction on their path. But when two men knock on Vanya’s mansion door one day, the narrative takes a different direction and the rest of the 139 minute film had me grinning with its breathless fireball energy and wit. In retrospect, the first 45 minutes are needed to get you to despise the characters for the rest of it to work, so stay with it if you’re feeling the same way. It’s a film where characters are consistently pulled from pillar to post but there’s also a stark tenderness to its humanity and Baker portrays a vivid contrast between the rich and poor. It’s beautifully shot by Drew Daniels, who lends the film its disorientingly frenetic edge. 

Mikey Madison, who was one of Charles Manson’s accomplices in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, is fantastic as Anora and thoroughly deserving of awards attention. She has bundles of empathy and despite her demeaning work selling her body, she knows how to get what she wants. Yura Borisov is also brilliant as Igor, a Russian henchman with morals with a similarly modest financial background as Anora who makes such an impression despite not having many lines. Karen Karagulian is brilliant as Toros, an Armenian handler, who’s mania knows no bounds when his career is jeopardised. And although I hated the character, there’s no doubt Mark Eydelshteyn satisfies the brief as Vanya. 

Anora is ultimately an excellent film from Sean Baker and quite possibly his best work. It made for quite the memorable cinema experience, especially my frustrated reaction to its first act, only to u-turn once it takes a different direction. That’s what makes Anora quite the emotional rollercoaster and it’s undoubtedly a fearsomely original piece of work.