I’ve said it already, but the best double feature movie experience I ever had was Call Me By Your Name into The Florida Project. We thank Luca Guadagnino for the first one, but director Sean Baker gets credit for the latter, and backed it up marvelously with Red Rocket. Anora hits Australia with a high level of anticipation, not only coming from me, but the wider cinematic community that has already heaped on it a ton of praise. I’ll just be grateful to see Mikey Madison star in a big blockbuster movie where she isn’t inadvertently lit on fire 🔥 Twice that’s happened already in her career, and anything more than zero is a lot.
A conscientious stripper, Anora (Mikey Madison), who goes by Ani, hits it big when a young Russian client, Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), wants to see her outside hours. Vanya’s house is huge, and Vanya will pay more and more for Anora to stay at his whim. In Vegas, Vanya suggests if he were to marry Anora, then he could legally become an American citizen that would never have to go home, and after a semi-serious discussion, that’s what the pair decide to do. But Vanya is the son of an extremely wealthy and powerful family of Russia, and Vanya’s parents are none too happy when they hear rumours from across the sea that their son has married.
This movie does such a deft job at setting up Vanya as a child, even before he does a runner – he plays video games, fucks like a rabbit, and slides around his apartment like it’s a funhouse. But my favourite piece of information to cater to Vanya’s ways is how there’s a packet of Cheetos on the coffee table in front of the TV that are never in focus, but prominent enough to notice due to their distinct colours. I don’t know why Cheetos have become the snack food of derision for naysayers to level at slobs who “live in their mother’s basements and eat Cheetos all day”, but it’s effective, and transfers well into subtly building Vanya’s personality type. Like all of Sean Baker’s movies, Anora is dripping in the perfect art of focalised subtly, making the universe feel natural through simple words and actions to build character and relations. There would honestly be too many examples to mention here, but I love how Anora is always subduing her laughter when she and Vanya have sex, like she’s above his efforts, but is innately endearing, and wants to remain professional. I love the short glimpse we get of Anora’s home, as she goes home to sleep, as it’s important to compare her living standard to Vanya’s shortly thereafter to realise why she’s so impressed. But in that scene, I think there’s only a two sentence conversation between Anora and her sister, concerning if Anora has picked up the milk, which also confirms how Anora lives with her sister, and their relationship, which seems to be built on frustration and routine. This movie got me thinking about how lesser movies (Blink Twice) leave me befuddled and critical of their lack of subtly, and it led me extend upon a realisation I often think about. I often think about stand-up comedians, and how commonly their first hour-specials usually sound like they’re trying to emulate how a comedian should sounds, before they reach a second stage where they find their voice, and say things the way they want them to be said. But then, there’s probably a third stage, where an artist can set up and refer to what they want to say without even saying anything directly. Sean Baker understands the third stage, and is a master of using action and realism to put an idea in your head, giving you a strong sense of the unspoken at play, to have the audience intuit on a higher plane. Whereas (and using Zoe Kravitz’ Blink Twice as the punching bag again) other directors have to linger on that scar, and make sure you see or hear what they want you to see or hear, and it comes with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Sean Baker’s direction and presentation of a story is high level, and who’s to say if it’s a talent that can be taught, or if it comes naturally, when so many movies can’t manage it.
But then on top of that – and perhaps because of it – this story manages to be so funny, and sad, whimsy, raunchy, pulsating and plain. I haven’t seen such a well-crafted jumble of emotions since The Banshees of Inisherin, and perhaps beyond that. There’s the one scene in particular, the long scene where Anora is tied up, that acts like all the characters are puppets on interconnected strings, where one tiny move or emotional plea directly relates to another character feeling something else, and you care about everything. Put plainly, you’re mad for Anora, held against her will. You’re also distraught for her, confused as to why her new husband would abandon her. You worry if Anora could also be in danger, but the goons, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), get bit and fall down like they’re the Wet Bandits in Home Alone, and so you laugh at them as well. Then when Toros (Karren Karagulian) finally makes the scene, you understand where he is coming from, because Vanya is useless, owns nothing, and so the marriage is rightly contentious. You also register his fear of the family above. Watching this scene alone is pure ecstasy – the perfect encapsulation of drama and empathy ♥
From there, the movie is so good at placing the suggestion that, “hey, maybe Igor isn’t such a bad guy”, and through camera angles, he is always watching on with wide eyes, like us, as Anora’s fire is always outmaneuvered by the Russian’s outrage. It builds to a point where you might think that maybe it would be nice if Anora and Igor got together, despite all the crazy and emotional turmoil going on around them. I certainly got swept up in it, so when Anora finally relents to that desire, I’m grateful for the notion more than caring for her wellbeing 🙏 Ah, but then Anora has to cry, so to not put aside the cost of that absolutely draining rollercoaster she has been on in the past twenty-four hours 😢 I wonder how many people in the audience were rightly fuming at the movie putting Anora in another sexy situation so quickly without giving her time to process. Because Anora must cry, and delay any happy ending – she has fought, she has believed herself free of her poorer life, she has been left behind.
I cannot do this movie justice, for the way the viewing experience is better than words can describe. But it’s uplifting to me to relate to a work this much. Even through my two most recent reviews, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, and Pedro Almodovar with The Room Next Door – and I would even throw Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things in this conversation as well – there’s sort of a way a director unveils a philosophy through just the nature of stories they choose to tell. And particularly in these cases, concerning the relations of women and men, sex and society – not only do I like Anora personally, as the events unfold, but the implications of the story also FEEL real, compared to the others that may be bleak, containing a kernel of truth, but don’t really fit in my bill for a healthy attitude or endeavour towards these aspects in life. Does that make sense? To me, Anora seems to be about a bright eyed girl doing her best, waiting for her happenstance and resourcefulness to provide a better life; seduced by Vanya’s pretty things, and taking a chance that that’s enough. Igor is the nurture; the truer happiness in values that aim to work in caring for one another (even if, at this stage, one could argue Igor is caught up in Anora’s beauty as the drive of his decency, since he barely knows her that well). It’s really another tale as old as time, where once a Prince might seem the perfect husband, with status and trinkets for days; but it’s the other guy that’s been there all along, with compassion and comradery leading a bride to live happily ever after 🌈 I just didn’t expect that story to be interpreted through the veil of a glitter-haired dancer, her Russian hook-up, and the muscle taking baseball bats to a lolly shop 😄 But Sean Baker has a habit of being compelled to tell these ground-level stories, and tease out the hidden or entrenched humanity within them. They appeal to me so completely, and feel true at the same time. Which, I think, not only makes him a great director, but a man with a good heart ♥
Mikey Madison is really great – it’s becoming all too common for the industry’s stars to bare all, and I don’t want to overlook the fact that it may be a big brave deal for them to do so, although I may be old fashion. Physically, she’s got the dance moves, and learnt some Russian for the part; and after Simon Rex seemingly got a significant boost in his career after starring in a Sean Baker’s Red Rocket, no doubt Madison might’ve viewed this as her big break, and she has commendably gone after it. It’s funny, when you think on an equally up-and-coming young talent like Margaret Qualley, who starred in three big movies last year, while Madison has leap-frogged her in one, and will get an Oscar nomination. Enjoy the flowers, baby! And that’s just the exciting nature of the industry; you just never know who’s going to skyrocket to the top of any given season. (Need I remind people that “George of the Jungle” is a deserved Oscar Winner, in the same year as the little Chinese boy from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 🤯)
Is Sean Baker going to win Best Picture?! I think he might. I think he should based on what I’ve witnessed this far. But even if he doesn’t, he has made a run of three movies now that are near perfect for me 🙌 Now, I would still have to give Christopher Nolan, and then Denis Villeneuve, the two top spots on my list of my favourite directors of the current moment, just based on their ability to wield large budgets and extensive workspaces, but Sean Baker must sit third. No doubt about it! And there could be an argument that he should be number one, since he is able to make such powerful movies with less, next to nothing 🤔 In My Favourite Movies of 2022, I urged people not to sleep on Sean Baker, and now I hope Anora will be big enough that his name might gain recognition to people who don’t follow the industry so closely. Because Anora is perfect. Sean Baker continues to improve. I’m a happy camper and this award season is heating up! If I were to compile my best movies of the past decade, since I’ve been doing these reviews, I think Anora would be on there.
5.0
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