Anora (dir. Sean Baker)
By: Adam Freed
Not many people can resist the intoxicating allure of a life of infinite wealth and endless possibility. For Anora, a self-assured twenty-five-year-old exotic dancer, the promise of a life beyond her lower middle class hardship is simply too enticing to ignore. In writer and director Sean Baker’s Anora, he explores the trappings of a Cinderella romance in a world devoid of fairy tales. Baker, who this year won the prestigious Palme d’Or for best picture at the Cannes Film Festival, weaves the story of a magnetic young woman whose already chaotic life is sent into overdrive when she meets Ivan, a free-spending party machine and son of a Russian oligarch. Once Ivan’s tornadic lifestyle hits the bloodstream of Anora and audiences there is simply no denying the corrosive allure of a life around which many a fantasy has been spun. Make no mistake, Baker (The Florida Project) leaves little room to confuse fantasy with feasible reality, yet the art of his outstanding film exists within the promise and perseverance of its monumental leading lady Mikey Madison (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). Madison embue’s her character with a lovable toughness, a New Yorker’s edge, streetwise beyond her years, but simultaneously naive and unable to ward off the vicious bait that is the promise of upward mobility.
Anora is gorgeously rendered by cinematographer Drew Daniels (Waves, Red Rocket). Daniels’ vision of New York is never mistaken for glitz and glamor, but rather a gritty, cold and indifferent metropolis quick to turn its shoulder to the desires of a young lady that under different circumstances very might well stand a chance in the world. Under the direction of Sean Baker, and the keen eye of Drew Daniels, audiences are offered a variety of visions, from steel gray winter skies to a joyless and frozen Coney Island. Contrasting the harsh realities of a New York winter is the warm neon glow of mirrored and musty nightclubs, humid with dance’s thick perspiration. In these pulsing subterranean rooms, the possibilities of Ivan and Anora’s rapid romance take flight and with them Baker sagely tempts audiences to allow themselves to be swept away in the warm underbelly of the city that never sleeps.
It would be lazy to call Anora a cautionary tale because for anyone with a semblance of life experience it is clear from Ivan’s first appearance that all that glitters is not gold. For the promising young heroine, the tighter she squeezes the promise of economic freedom, the more her dream slips through her clenched fingers. There is no mistaking that Mikey Madison’s performance leaves her in the driver’s seat of the year’s best, while the archetype of a lady of the night with a heart of gold has been explored in film, Madison’s exploration of Anora carries with it an optimistic freshness. There is heartbreak in witnessing a young lady conditioned into believing that all she has to offer the world exists beneath her clothes. There is also a genius in Madison’s ability to fill her character with life and hope and dimension. Sean Baker’s lurid and intoxicating Anora reminds that there is seldom a silver lining, no easy escape from the chaos of life’s cool indifference. Despite all of this, Anora solidifies that mature film art is alive and well, acting as a vibrant provocation of the senses. Finally, a reality worthy of celebration.
Target Score: 9/10 Catapulted by a herculean performance from diminutive actress Mikey Madison, director Sean Baker’s Anora effortlessly envelops audiences into the promise of a modern Cinderella story bathed in a grim realistic light.