ANORA

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Storyline (warning: spoilers)

Sean Baker’s fascination with chaotic, charismatic sex workers continues with Anora, a wildly entertaining, modern-day screwball comedy set in 2018 that barrels through New York and Las Vegas. Mikey Madison is a revelation as Anora, a feisty exotic dancer and sometime escort who, after a whirlwind week of partying, finds herself married to Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch. But wedded bliss is abruptly curtailed when Ivan’s father’s harassed factotum Toros (Karren Karagulian) arrives with orders to impose an annulment. Ivan promptly scarpers. And Anora is left to fight tooth and fake nails for the marriage that she still half believes is grounded in real love.
Anora, who prefers the name Ani, first meets her princeling suitor in the Manhattan gentlemen’s club where she works. He requests a dancer who can speak Russian (Ani is of Uzbek descent, she can understand Russian though prefers not to speak it) and is immediately smitten. He offers to pay her to be his girlfriend for a week – a week that includes a private jet trip to Vegas and a four-carat diamond ring. Eydelshteyn brings a gangling Tiggerish man-child playfulness to the character of Ivan, and he is just about appealing enough that we don’t assume that Ani is solely drawn to his bank balance. But the breakneck editing of the round of clubs, drugs and frantic, inelegant sex tells us all we need to know about Ivan’s attention span.
The picture shifts up a gear with the arrival of Toros, who is preceded by his hapless friend and associate Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and a taciturn Russian heavy named Igor (Yura Borisov). Garnick and Igor are tasked with keeping the newlyweds at Ivan’s home, a vast concrete edifice that looks as though it was built to store gold bullion rather than to house people. But Ivan sprints away, and Ani puts up a fight that leaves Garnick bleeding and Igor quietly impressed with her right hook. Where the film excels is in the writing, and the deft handling of tonal shifts. The crescendo of hostilities between Ani and those who seek to part her from her new life abates and the film ends with the unexpected: a bittersweet moment of human connection.