The Film Everybody's Talking About — Spoiler Free Review of Sean Baker's 'Anora'
You want me to be your little wifey?
I don’t know who is in charge of such things, but somebody needs to place Mikey Madison up next to Margot Robbie in the Sexiest New York Accents Hall of Fame. New Jersey filmmaker Sean Baker is no stranger to spawning festival darlings, having graced the world with films like Tangerine, Red Rocket and The Florida Project. This May, Baker walked away with the Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival and has been sparking discourse ever since. It’s clear Baker has the formula many auteur filmmakers strive for in terms of injecting the raw authenticity of the world into something so vibrant and theatrical.
Anora is so masterfully acted and directed that audiences won’t even register they’re watching a movie. They will be in the room with Ani (Madison) and Vanya (Mark Eidelshtein), becoming part of the madness and the mania and the chaos, once things spiral out of control. This immersion has to do with Baker’s style and approach in direction and editing, but Madison’s performance is what fills in the gaps and commands audiences to leap into the story beside her. It didn’t take long for word to spread about Mikey Madison’s performance and before the summer was over, the film found itself at number one on every cinephile’s watchlist (or re-watchlist… if you were one of the lucky ones).
Is Madison’s performance as gripping and visceral and transcendent as reviews are saying? Da. Which, for those of us who aren’t married to the sons of Russian oligarchs, means yes. And she didn’t even have to be lit on fire in the third act! Not only is her performance impressively layered and nuanced but she consistently commands attention throughout the film. She delivers a performance within a performance with such charisma and force on the exterior, and a subtle vulnerability we see notes of in her eyes that is so strikingly human. The reason one might describe this as a performance within a performance is because there are so many sequences in this film where she is acting out her persona as Ani—the hustler—a young New Yorker born and bred to survive.
As this relationship with Vanya blooms, we see those walls start to fall and she lets herself believe this fantasy might actually be real. And we believe it too. It’s through this performance that we realize there’s something tender and breakable within the hardened exterior and once we reach the end, we understand just how much all of this has had an effect on her. And we meet Anora.
The way this movie blurs the line between joy and despair is so tragically human. That is what sets this film apart from other projects released this year. It is quite literally the reason movies are made; to emulate the human experience through story. Filmmakers often sacrifice ingenuity for glamor or spectacle. Yet the way this film approaches cumbersome themes like wealth, privilege and classism remolds the American Dream into something modern and tangible. At the same time, it brilliantly juxtaposes Vanya’s regality with Ani’s common experience in a way we can all relate to without dipping into nihilism.
This is an unconventional love story. It is so gritty and real and tragic and beautiful. It’s being widely praised because it does exactly what all great films do. It encompasses the sweet and the sours of our reality as humans in such a poignant way. The first act is this beautiful mania of falling in love and getting everything you’ve ever wanted. It abandons all traditional structure by bringing the audience up and up and up for the first forty five minutes, just for us to watch it all come crashing down.
It does so well in having us think like Ani… side with her… believe there’s hope this Cinderella story might work out even though every logical and rational bone in us is screaming that this is too good to be true. That the systems in place never work out in our favor. That life is unfair and cruel and it’s impossible to keep your head above water, much less find a way out of the ocean completely. This is Sean Baker’s devastating style; so charming and delightful in the way it seduces us, yet so savage and sincere in the way it reminds us of the truth.
The dialogue, the comedic timing, the ensemble’s performances. This film never pulls its punches. It’s impossible to take our eyes off Ani and even if we could, we wouldn’t want to. There’s so much heart in these performances, particularly from Mikey Madison and Yura Borisov. While watching, it became clear this film had all of the ingredients of a bonafide classic, including Madison’s star power and the raw magic required to tell a story of passion. It has a longevity that beckons multiple viewings and audiences will likely happily indulge this whim. It won’t be surprising when Anora receives a number of nominations from the Academy and if nothing else is certain, the internet is impatiently waiting for Mikey Madison to walk away with Best Actress come March 2025.
Thank you to The Extra Mile and Elevation Pictures for making my cinephile dreams come true by screening this masterpiece early! Watch Anora in select theaters in Toronto on October 25th. See it in theatres everywhere on November 8th.
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