Anora has been described by many as a Cinderella story, but if it is, it’s one where she gets the castle only for it to become completely deserted. Anora is the biggest and grandest film of Sean Baker’s career, following Anora, or as she prefers, Ani, a soft-spoken stripper. One night she meets Ivan, or Vanya as his friends call him, the son of a Russian oligarch who is in New York to study, they soon get acquainted and head off on a lustful but loving lifestyle of luxury.
Sean Baker has made his career on a series of films that displays himself as a filmmaker who holds no judgement, showing the marginalised and judged figures of society. Yet, whereas some would look down on the stripper figure of Ani, Baker breaks down stereotypes, looking at what is underneath the façade of the ditzy, dainty lap dancer. Indeed Ivan’s relationship is also a refreshing and playful example of the unjudgmental richer man, who you feel sees past the escort label. It is a youthful and no-holds-barred version of Pretty Woman or The Great Gatsby.
As their relationship forms Ani moves into Vanya’s humble abode, a Gatsby-like mansion on a waterfront, that is empty and lifeless but with unlimited luxury, it even has a lift. Throughout the opening act, Ani and Vanya are a sweet couple with a limitless lifestyle but there is a lingering, anxious dread that something is about to go wrong, and when it does there is a warped sense of time, like the Titanic crashing into the iceberg, we can see everything about to catastrophically unfold but we, like Ani, are helpless to stop it.
Throughout, Baker has complete control of our emotions, giving a euphoric rise before dragging us down and slumping back down to rock bottom. The opening is indulgent and extravagant, perhaps overly so, a montage of sex, drugs, and love crammed into their week of happiness. There are no stakes, no conflict, just the endless possibility of freedom. The sequence is drawn out for a good 20 or 30 minutes of the film, ending with Vanya and Ani marrying in the centre of Las Vegas to end an opulent, decadent and raucously reckless spree of frivolity and spoilt flair. However, what must go up must also come down, and this is the fall of a brick crumbling off the top of the highest of wealthy skyrises, as the film leaves your full heartbroken with credits rolling in complete silence but for the sound of windscreen wipers, in one of the more speechless endings of the year. It is a film that will leave you feeling numb, empty and completely drained.
Anora is without doubt Baker’s most accomplished work to date. Utilising a close and intimate style it provides a fantastical style. The sort that makes you feel that these two lovers are the only people on the planet. Like Anora’s strands of sparkly hair which glisten in contrast to the black, her new life is one of hope, brightness and optimism against the rest of her life, of sticky survival. The film opens with a remixed version of Take That’s ‘Greatest Day’, one of the best needle drops of recent times, it plays like an anthem of the prospect for a better life, an upbeat earworm that emphasises the unlimited euphoria of the brief moment.
However, later on, Baker loses the neon brightness of the opening, making Anora’s world cold and barren as she loses the façade of hope as her bright future comes crashing down, as Vanya’s position in a wealthy family interferes with their connection. At one point Baker shows her wiping off her make-up, like the façade of her life with Vanya, she is back down to a powerless, unemployed low life.
The coldness also plays to the film’s rise and fall flow. One of the film’s earliest sequences is a New Year’s Eve party, it is a joyous affair, full of optimism for the start of a new year, for Anora this is even more potent, as it is the potential for a new life. However, as it comes to a crashing icy blow, she is forced to walk around in the freezing cold. Wrapped up, hiding her body from the world, she is broken, with the empty streets of the outskirts of Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach, this is not the hustle and bustle of a stereotypical New York, but rather a lonely, coastal one. The winter setting is perhaps most apparent in a scene involving a snow-covered car, showing the power of the cold throughout the film.
The film is also held up by a brilliantly soft, yet commanding performance by Mikey Madison, who has great comedic timing, in one of the funniest and scarily dark and isolating films of the year. It also wouldn’t succeed without the chemistry she has with Mark Eidelstein, which invests you with how the film progresses with her down the line. As her thick New York accent comes out there is a fiery fight for voice and authority, in a powerfully feminine character, with long, drawn-out scenes showing the injustices she has succumbed to.
Anora is Sean Baker’s best film, keeping his distinct choice of characters, whilst having a heightened, elevated and more indulgent, luxurious style. The film is part comedy, part horror and all tragedy, with a strong blend of heartwarming fantasy and crushing realism, as Anora’s Disney princess world becomes too good to be true. Whilst the film is perhaps overly indulgent and slightly long at times, it rewards you through the transcendent experience, leaving a numbing emptiness towards the end. A film that builds you up to knock you down, and surely one of the best of the year.
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