There are many raised voices through the middle and final sections of Sean Baker’s latest comedy-film, “Anora”. Things begin to get noisy when a recently married young couple’s domestic bliss is interrupted by a quasi-home-invasion. Chaos ensues and the husband escapes. There are more shouted conversations and calamitous hijinks as the bride tries to evade capture from the intruders. This sequence is not played for suspense, though, but mostly for laughs.
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.
