Anora opens as a brilliant and contemporary Pretty Woman, an incorrect romantic comedy with palpable, tangible, carnal prostitution inside. It doesn’t lose its luster as much turns into one of those darkly humorous thrillers in which the crazed protagonists move from one part of the city to another (the New York of the popular migrant neighborhoods and the little shops of Coney Island) in a desperate search for someone, talking and shouting at each other at crazy rhythms. Crown in a final scene that is burned into the memory of the spectator, in which a bitter sweetness and a silent desperation reveal that perhaps, perhaps, there is still some reason to continue to hope for a better future.
Sean Baker’s film that won the Palme d’Or at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival it’s almost unique in how it slides from one genre to another, with mastery, without losing its verve and its brilliant tone even in its most dramatic moments. It is consumed like a blockbuster but leaves a lot behind, because it is auteur cinema, of substance, independent, of struggle.
Baker, in fact, continues to tell a story that has obsessed him since the Florida Project: that of an America where the social elevator is broken, and those on the lower floors have to make do. Baker’s latest are not desperate, there is no pain pornography between the girls of Florida Project and the porn stars of the previous Red Rocket.
Anora slides from romantic comedy to fast-paced thriller without ever disappointing
If anything, there is pornography, sex. The Baker Award is dedicated to sex workers, like his flamboyant protagonist who gives the film its title. Daughter of Soviet migrants, third generation American, Anora does not consider herself a prostitute, she defines herself as “an erotic dancer”. She works as a lap dancer in a club called HeadQuarters, she is confident, beautiful, young, irresistible. Being of European descent she understands a little Russian, learned from her grandmother. She is thus paired with a rich and very young client who speaks little English and with whom she immediately strikes a certain understanding. As well as Richard Gere in Pretty Wonan, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) rent the girl for a week. The boy is sweet, enthusiastic, indolent, very spoiled: the young son of a Russian oligarch takes Anora into a world with different rules, where money and people are valued with unusual metrics.
A remarkable series of exchanges take place between the sheets between the two, but also parties, lazy afternoons on the sofa hugging each other playing with the PlayStation 5, evenings at the disco, trips to Las Vegas and the inevitable wedding in the chapel open 24 hours a day . Anora knows real life and, as a stranger to Ivan’s world, she fascinates him with her charm and her inexhaustible energy, her erotic charge combined with an admirable lightness and lightheartedness.
It seems like the culmination of a strange rom-com where we start with a hot lap dance and culminate in the first kiss between the lips many nights later, but everything changes. Anora crosses the progressive disillusionment of its protagonist, forced to chase Ivan for an entire day together with three fixers sent by the boy’s parents to convince or force him to cancel the wedding.
In search of the annulment documents and the fugitive Ivan, the quartet creates a thriller à la the Safdie brothers, very excited, full of unexpected events, in which one man shouts over the other, waits to find Ivan and put an end to the forced coexistence. Here Baker hides in plain sight a precious gem, the presence ofRussian actor Yuriy Borisov, an acting marvel already discovered thanks to Compartment N°6. He plays the role of the gregarious Igor who stays silent and keeps an eye on Anora, on the sidelines of the story, but is always present. He is the one who ties her up, he is the one who takes them from her and tries to get rid of her. The others discuss, shout, compare: Igor does what he says, in silence.
The US social elevator is broken and sex is the only shortcut
His presence seems like an extra, but it is an investment that pays off in the end. A conclusion in which Baker cheats on Anora’s dreams, because this movie is the ideal continuation of the already beautiful Red Rocket. Both films describe sex, pornography, prostitution as the last social elevator that still works in the United States of America. Baker’s aren’t sad prostitutes, but brilliant girls, aware of their value and their body,ready to believe in love and to scream and scratch, bite and hit to defend what they have conquered. The problem, Baker explains, is that the United States is increasingly rich: the native ones and the rich oligarchs who can trample on reservations, courtrooms, laws and other people’s feelings by waving money instead of passports. Sex takes you up a few steps, but on the social ladder, for just the time of a film.
Anora, however, finds a resolution that hides sweetness in its bitterness, who among the tears also finds the hope of a just love, of a justice that does itself and repairs some wrongs.
Mikey Madison is going to be a star
Anora’s trio of young protagonists is truly excellent, but Mikey Madison is simply amazing. Not only because she puts her all into it, without veils and without reservations, but because she manages to maintain a phenomenal pace and energy throughout the film, conquering the viewer, making him enter her world, overcoming his prejudices. We will definitely see her again soon elsewhere, because this role will change her life (and will probably take her to the Oscars).
