Our names are the pearl to our entire being’s oyster. Much of our traits as individuals are associated with the signaling power of our name and the identifying qualities it has when referring to one another. There are many “Romans” out there (although I personally know very few), but when you refer to my name it is associated with your perception of who I am, how I’ve talked to you, what I like, and what I don’t. My name, just like yours, is shared by many, and still, we graft an individual purpose onto it that defines what is uniquely you.
For writer-director Sean Baker’s newest film, Anora, the power of that name has turned into gold-certified box office. Starring Mikey Madison in a star-making role as the titular Brooklyn stripper (she prefers a shortened ‘Ani’ as her nickname), Anora is the Palme d’Or winning movie of the fall that has been remarkably undersold as a slicing screwball comedy with hilarious visual gags, caricatures, and vicious zingers volleyed between the characters. Baker’s darkly comedic vision of stark realism takes to the padded mansions and misty strip clubs of Manhattan with enough maniacal charm to be won over. Even if his attempts at pulling the audience back down to Earth lacks the emotional gravity to ground the audience with a necessary anchor.
In some fashion or another, Anora has all the makings of Sean Baker’s most audacious formal project of his career. But in some manner, his formalities are the film’s greatest weakness - a hyper-extended exercise in aestheticized monotony. However, we can’t stop falling for the grace that beams off a name as radiant as the scarlet calling card draped around the main character.
Sean Baker’s career has been one to watch since the beginning. He has a distinct, vivid focus on lives that are often pushed to the peripherals. Within that periphery, his small-scale stories are broadened by the vastness of empathy as seen through the honesty of his lens. His camera dials back on attention-grabbing flair as he lets the actors take control of his images. The stark realism is in the background, costumes, and natural lighting, but the larger-than-life qualities we typically associate with the medium are within the performances.
Barring the notable exceptions like Madison here, Simon Rex in Red Rocket, or Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project, Baker’s films feature inexperienced actors. I typically try to avoid using the word “authentic” to describe the significance of artistic choices, but there is a clear path toward establishing authenticity through faces we aren’t used to seeing on screen. Madison may not be a headliner yet, but this is an exacting performance that supports Baker’s approach. Madison, who isn’t alien to working with established filmmakers, completely transforms into the tempered Brooklynite. Her waist-length black hair shines against her outfits and swings with every strut. Her accent is sharp, and her wits a roulette of cleverly constructed phrases that land with a feverish laugh or emotional intensity. Madison is by all considerations, utilizing her entire being to channel the spirit of Anora into someone who may have lived this story before.
Madison will be showered with glory over the next few months, but her performance is above and beyond the reduction of awards. Anora’s story begins with the pleasures of work, and Baker’s camera makes certain not to diminish the beaming projection of herself in her line of work. Madison takes control of what the camera sees, she showcases Anora in her element without fail, and Baker makes it easy for this pocket of Brooklyn to become a place we don’t mind being in for the next two hours.
When Anora has an opportunity to work with a Russian guest (thanks to her ability to understand it although she isn’t perfect at speaking it), she meets Ivan, an immature 21-year-old son of a Russian oligarch. This encounter triggers an unexpected romance between the young adults as Ivan’s wealth can supply Anora with her material desires. The two spend several nights having sex and partying before they go on a trip to Las Vegas that explodes with excess, and more sex before they agree to get married. The marriage will supply Ivan with a green card to break free from his parents, and Anora will get a multi-carat diamond ring. Although they appear in love with each other, their eyes widen at gaining something more out of the marriage than developing a deeper love for one another.
Baker is quick to charm us with the dialect of Anora’s Brooklyn temper with Ivan’s stumbling Russian accent working against one another to generate romantic interest and comedic touches. His script is littered with Gen-Z slang that isn’t ashamed of how a generation of people speak. Baker finds novelty and a sliver of truth by conveying this couple as honestly as they should be. They’re naive, but not stupid; capable of making decisions, but not grown enough to make their choices with logic over emotion. Anora thrives throughout the first hour as Anora and Ivan escape into a blissful rendition of a Cinderella-style tale. Baker prepares us for a story that can only exist in a euphoric montage – a real, albeit excessive sequence of moments only money can buy. Money is wasted, tossed at losing card hands, and endless bottles of alcohol before the unexpected marriage is made aware to Ivan’s family in Russia.
The honeymoon phase settles down when Baker’s realism completely swallows the couple. The joyous excess is swapped for abrasive and crude remarks, champagne popping and fireworks dissolve into shattered glass and throw-up. Baker diminishes the control Anora thought she had by giving it to the hands that always seem to worm their way into places and lives they don’t belong. Baker transitions from the bountiful pleasure of living outside boundaries and expectations to the harsh reality of the situation. He reveals that one way or another, this starburst is just a blip within a system controlled by people who enable it through the privileges of class.
Baker doesn’t shy away from comedic jests as the film gets funnier when Ivan’s extended family is introduced. Including a brilliantly tame performance from Yuriy Borisov as the Zakharov family’s henchman, Igor. There’s an extensive sequence in Ivan’s home that includes physical gags and mile-a-minute dialogue that would make anyone with an ear for Howard Hawks’s screwball comedies with Grant and Russell/Hepburn perk with joy. Many will compare the scenes between Anora and Ivan’s family to 2019’s exceptional Uncut Gems, but Baker’s heart has always been connected to the old masters before his contemporary peers. And as fun as the story’s evolution is from young love to faux-fairytale, the strengths of the film are minimized as Anora loses control of her story.
This isn’t so much as Baker stripping agency from Anora, and it absolutely services a thematic point, but it articulates recycled points about sex work being diminished by controlling men. To a degree where the aesthetics of the work is suddenly reduced to a monotonous tone that miscalculates the significance of spontaneity against Baker’s stagnant realism. His style is so focused on maintaining a realistic portrayal of events he ends up losing his grip on the opportunities filmmaking can achieve. Compared to The Florida Project where he earns a surreal ending after aching through a plotless adventure, Anora avoids getting back to a euphoric state. What was once a free expression of character and magical happenstance suddenly shifts to a tightly controlled beat-to-beat search for a character. With a conclusion we’re already smart enough to anticipate.
Sure, Baker maintains a quality true to “the state of things”, but there has to be more meaning beyond an isolated incident. There are allusions to a classist gap that could provide a deeper cinematic purpose, but neither the characters or sets explore this. As Anora is drawn into the family tree of Ivan we learn nothing else about anybody. Mom and Dad are stubborn in their ways, Ivan is a bit foolish, and Anora is a clever-lipped individual fooled by the material gain she’s obtained. The problem is the film never evolves to a state of administering enough emotional surprises to craft a deeper understanding of what Baker is really trying to say here. Perhaps a flaw in Baker’s style is that his attempts to stay true to life are often not fit for the medium to expound on ideological exploration.
At what point does the film ever go beyond feeling like another aesthetic exercise gravitating toward people who are often misrepresented? Which, in many ways, is great that stories positively endorse those shaded in a negative light, but we never learn anything more about Anora that wasn’t immediately apparent. At the end of the day, Anora is a comedy, but the stylistic approach always has the appearance of alluding to something more. Images are dense with action and energy, outbursts and movement. It draws apt comparisons to Uncut Gems here, but there’s no sense of anxiety or uncertainty about what comes next. Each beat is so calculated it actually defies the authenticity Baker is striving for.
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