The raised, often angry, voices are part of a running theme of chaos threading through the narrative as a romantic encounter descends into one of absurdity but also disappointment for the eponymous Anora (Mikey Madison). But even when it is bellowing at us, one gets the sense that “Anora” wants us to look beyond its noise for something happening beneath the surface. It is part of a running dichotomy between appearance and reality that Baker employs in the film that similarly considers its primary character with the same kind of contrasting tensions.
Anora, Ani for short, is an exotic-dancer/sex-worker who has a whirlwind week with a young Russian man (Mark Eydelshteyn as Vanya). Ani, like the film she is in, is often loud and strident. She rails at men who try to intimidate her, stands up for herself when those around her will not, and faces off with jealous co-workers. Baker wants us to see beyond the bravado, though.
Just as the noise of the film hopes to surprise us with quiet moments to jar us, Baker takes pleasure in changing our perspective on Ani as the film goes on. In the final sequence, the film luxuriates in shifting the mood of the film and shifting our perceptions of some characters. You can recognise the dramatic structure of surprises etched out through the entirety of “Anora”, and yet I left the film more mindful of its structural gambits than convinced by its emotional arcs or character beats.
Sean Baker’s “Anora” takes a lot of pride in thrusting the real world onto us and shattering our illusions. The film’s structure depends on this sleight-of-hand. It repeatedly presents us with incomplete encounters with things or people before pulling the rug out from under us – jolting us into the real world after teasing a fantasy. The entire film is devoted to this kind of shattering of illusions.
The first 40 minutes of the film run by with the energy of a romance on cocaine. When Ani is introduced to Vanya at the strip club, she is charmed by his ostensible naiveté. He takes her home for a night, and then a week and soon is proposing marriage. Despite her initial scepticism of his proposal Ani allows herself to be charmed, although we’re not sure why, by his insistence that a marriage to an American might keep his parents, including his oligarch father, from forcing him back to Russia.
The film is most entertaining in these early moments, jetting by on the excellent chemistry between Madison and Eydelshteyn playing out a kind of improbable romance that is easy to root for. Even though we suspect early on that bliss won’t last, there’s a compelling hint of silliness in their courtship as both young performers seem to play-act as real adults. When Vanya asks Ani her age and she admits she’s 23; he is surprised. “You seem older”, he tells her, “like 25.”
These are the kind of early signs that signal that the two are more children than adults and in way over their heads. “Anora” is decidedly less intoxicating when trouble comes knocking and the film devolves into a comedy of escalating errors upturning our illusions of a romance.
When news gets back to Russia that Vanya is married, his Armenian handler Toros (Karren Karagulian) descends on the couple with his two henchmen (Vanya Vache as his Toros’ Garnick, and Yura Borisov as Igor, a Russian) in tow. When Vanya disappears an increasingly unmoored Ani must make a temporary ceasefire with the priest and his goons to find Vanya before his parents arrive.
There are a handful of different genres careening through this bevy of plot points. Whenever Toros, a priest, and Garnick take centre screen Anora veers between a misshapen low-level crime comedy-of-errors. Baker’s direction is sharp at ensuring that even when things veer into violence, threatened or actual, that the film feels more humorous than malevolent. So, Toros attempts to intimidate Ani, but his bumbling comes across as more comical than fearsome. Igor swings a baseball bat destroying a confectionery store, but then swings it like a boy at play. There’s humour tied into the chaos. And it’s one that “Anora” is careening through until its very final minutes which depend on a reveal that’s no laughing matter. Again, Baker has presented us with one thing only to pull the rug out from us and show us the reality underneath.
But to what end? The constant insistence on showing us the reality beneath the illusions of this world feel half-hearted when “Anora” is so often more interested in its formal tricks and surprises than incisively assessing its character, chief among them Anora herself.
What’s in a name? In one of several scenes where Baker isolates Igor and Ani, precipitating a class-bond that the film depends on in its final third; Igor questions her about her name and its meaning. It’s one of several moments in the latter half of “Anora” that feel more focused on setting up later moments than in delving into the headspace of its characters. Baker is taking great pride in rejecting the seemingly superficial tales of rags-to-riches that has befallen characters like Ani in films and TV before, but one strange aspect of “Anora” is how often it resists the opportunity to offer Mikey Madison a chance to delve into the interiority of her Ani.
The film opens with a shot of several men getting lap-dances from girls at Headquarters, the strip club where Ani works. We know that the bright lights of those establishments are often just an illusion for the hard work and monotony of the job for the women who work there.
We are not exactly surprised as Baker peels layers away to reveal to us that the rich and powerful will do all they can to exploit and overpower the weak and poor. But “Anora” is so committed to hitting us over the head with the “reality” of its illusion-filled world that it finds little time to give Ani the kind of incisive assessment required to be a character-study. Moment after moment, “Anora” moves past scenes where we might see Ani alone and get a sense of what she wants out of this world. Baker is, instead, happy to have her plucky energy deployed only in relation to those around her. It makes for a film that is often easy to watch for its activity, but when the credits roll there’s a sense that “Anora” has little beyond ambivalence for the characters within it.
Anora is currently available for rent or purchase on Prime Video