Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Sean Baker
Starring: Mikey Madison, Mark Eidelstein, Yuri Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan
Mikey Madison's Anora Mikheeva is the latest in writer/director Sean Baker's growing line of sex worker protagonists. Sometimes Baker asks us to
empathise with these figures, like the young pornstar of Starlet or the transgender prostitutes of Tangerine, while in his previous film Red Rocket he portrayed a male pornstar as a manipulative creep.
Anora falls somewhere in between. When we meet her first she's
cynically and ruthlessly focussed on making money, an embodiment of the
narrators of the sort of rap songs that soundtrack her lap dances in the
backrooms of a Manhattan strip club. It's a job that likely nets her a
far higher income than most of her peers, given how easily manipulated
the average male is by a pretty smile ("I think that stripper really
liked me" et al), and Anora walks with the confident strut of someone
who believes she's made it. But perhaps the worst thing about capitalism
is how it constantly tells us we need more to be happy, and those who
have more than us can make us feel like like failures in comparison.
There's always a bigger fish, and Anora thinks she has reeled one in
when she meets Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the hard-partying son of a Russian
oligarch.
While Anora is 23-going-on-40, Ivan is a 21-year-old adolescent with no
experience of the real world. He initially treats Anora as a plaything,
paying for her to leave the strip club and spend a week in his
company, Pretty Woman style, but he seems to fall for her. Likewise Anora seems
attracted to his innocence, and as a Russian-American who does her best
to hide her roots, she perhaps feels a sense of pride in meeting a
Russian at the top of the food chain. When Ivan proposes to Anora, she
suspects it may solely be for a greencard but agrees nonetheless, and
the two are hitched in a Las Vegas chapel.
Baker subsequently contrasts the artificiality of the Vegas chapel with
a Brooklyn Orthodox church where an Armenian, Toros (Karren Karagulian), is forced to walk out on his child's baptism
when Ivan's irate parents order him to put an end to what they see as a
sham marriage. With his brother Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and young Russian henchman Igor (Yura Borisov) in tow, Toros heads to Ivan's mansion with a
poorly thought out plan to annul the marriage.
What ensues is a cross between a 1930s screwball comedy and a "one
crazy night" narrative in the manner of the Safdie brothers. The
centrepiece of the film is a manic home invasion that initially suggests
threats of violence against Anora but quickly flips as we realise the
three men sent to deal with her have no idea how to control this force
of nature. Anora becomes a screaming, biting, kicking harpy, but her
resistance is tempered by the dawning knowledge that Ivan probably isn't
going to take her side against his controlling parents. An uneasy
alliance is formed between Anora, Toros and his goons as they search the
city for the fleeing Ivan. Like a Preston Sturges comedy on cheap coke, Anora plays at a manic pace, its players spitting out lines in
overlapping English, Russian and Armenian as they rush from one venue to
another.
At a time when many in the west lack an appetite for a sympathetic
portrayal of a Russian, Baker dares to centre Igor as the heart of the
film. Unlike the relentless striving of those around him, Igor seems
content with his lowly role of hired muscle and emerges as a quietly
sensitive figure, Borisov's lowkey performance ultimately stealing our
attention from the more showy roles afforded to Madison, Eydelshteyn and Karagulian. Decades of negative portrayals of Eastern Europeans in
American cinema are rolled back as Baker humanises these people to the
point where he seems to suggest they come from a world that is far more
noble than the America in which they now find themselves toiling away.
Everyone is getting screwed in some way here, but it's only Igor who has
really made peace with this idea. In classic screwball fashion, Anora
and Igor are the bickering enemies who develop a heated attraction.
Unlike the men she usually encounters, Igor can't purchase Anora's
affections, but he just might be able to afford them.
Anora is in UK/ROI cinemas
now.
