Full disclosure, I ducked into “Anora” a couple of times, waiting for other movies to start, before finally setting aside the time to watch Sean Baker’s latest, start to finish.
The tale of an American sex worker of Eastern European descent who catches the fancy of a “whale,” a rich Russian oligarch’s son, who then marries her, it’s about transactional relationships — sexual and otherwise.
I couldn’t decide if this was really my thing. “Anora” lacks the raw emotion, street energy and urgency of Baker’s transgender romp “Tangerine” — and the pathos of his acclaimed peek at childhood homelessness in the “paradise” of “The Florida Project.” Catching thirty or forty minutes of this here and there had me shaking my head at its many explicit sex scenes, which have the whiff of polished, titillating “filler” in the narrative.
It’s easy enough to guess where all this is going. But how is this acclaimed filmmaker going to get 140 minutes of engaging, provocative “movie” out of all this carnality folded into gauche, bourgeois cliches?
The answer is that he doesn’t. “Anora” is an 85 minute movie in a 139 minute package. Lots of skin, lots of sex, plenty of calculated predation — he’s using her, she’s using him. Can a trip to Vegas be in their future?
There are only a couple of ways “Anora” could turn out, and Baker choses one. But only after he’s gotten his fill of athletic pole dances, lap dances, transactional sex and nudity.
The biggest shock in Mikey Madison’s performance in the title role is realizing she’s an actress with other credits. Baker’s MO as a filmmaker is finding “unknowns,” even people with no acting experience (“Tangerine”) but with a knowledge of the sort of characters they’re playing and the world they’re immersed in.
Madison is no stripper enlisted to portray someone she “knows” thanks to her life. She’s a career actress who mastered not just the dancing — laps, and poles — and the working class Bronx accent. She utterly inhabits this part, that of a 20something who does lucrative work but is smart enough to realize there are “no benefits” and “no 401K” attached to her “career.”
Landing “a whale” (rich client) as a husband feels a lot like a “Where do you see yourself in five years?” answer to a human resources dept. questionaire.
Anora isn’t shy about poaching co-workers’ regular clients and is a born saleswoman when it comes to “Wanna get a private room?” and “Let’s get you to the ATM.
She shares an El-side flat with another woman, sleeping all day and working all night in a job sure to age her and wear her out in a flash. Not that she acknowledges that reality.
Then this kid shows up with an entourage, a “boy” who wants a dancer who speaks Russian. Anora’s Russian “grandma never learned English,” so she’s his girl. She figures the kid is loaded, but she has no idea of how loaded until he suggests that she “google” his father’s name. He’s an oligarch, rich and connected.
But Dad and Mom are in Russia, and young Ivan, “Vanya” (Mark Eydelshteyn) is in New York, living in a seaside modernist mansion, playing video games, throwing parties and blowing through blow, hookers and cash.
Anora can’t hide the calculating she’s doing when she side-eyes his New Year’s Eve party invitation, when she’s negotiating his “exclusive” financial relationship with her.
One trip to Vegas later and they’re hitched. He’s 21 and learning what “better” sex is like from a pro. But “Anora” is about what happens when Ivan’s family and his family’s fixers do when they discover this unapproved-of marriage, and what she’ll do to save her whale.
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