Anora Review: Sean Baker Directs Mikey Madison in a Stellar Palme d’Or Winning Romantic Comedy

   November 2, 2024

Sean Baker isn’t the sort of filmmaker you’d expect to be a Palme d’Or winning director and Oscar frontrunner. His movies (Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket) don’t scream “accessible” to large audiences, and they aren’t self-anointed, high art pieces. Even The Florida Project, which was critically acclaimed in 2017 and includes many of the best technical elements and set pieces I’ve seen in a movie in the 21st century, isn’t the feel-good drama that usually cleans up at awards ceremonies. But Baker’s craft is undeniable, and it was only a matter of time before one of his movies broke through the mainstream in a real way, announcing its director as a must-see auteur for decades to come. Anora is that – and some. Featuring grandiose style and a remarkably vulnerable and physical lead performance from Mikey Madison (Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Scream 5) as the titular protagonist, Anora is among the greatest accomplishments in filmmaking in 2024.

Mikey Madison and Mark Eydelshteyn in Anora (2024), directed by Sean Baker
Mikey Madison and Mark Eydelshteyn in Anora (2024), directed by Sean Baker
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The movie has a dense plot that takes a few turns emotionally. Broadly speaking, it follows Anora – who prefers to go by Ani – as she meets a Russian Oligarch’s son at the strip club Ani works for. The Russian is Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn in a breakout role), who quickly takes a liking to Ani’s presence, both sexually and emotionally. Ani likes Vanya too, and after a few weeks, the two take a trip to Las Vegas and spontaneously tie the knot. Both know how ridiculous it sounds, but as the 139-minute movie plays out, they couldn’t even imagine it would spiral into the events that would ensue.

And in the moment, you feel as though Anora is 20 minutes too long. Once Vanya’s family learns of his sudden marriage to Ani, they send his loony godfather Toros (played by Karren Karagulian, who has appeared in every one of Sean Baker’s movies thus far) to force an annulment of the two’s marriage. Vanya flees his mansion at the sight of Toros and his cronies, which sparks a near hour of runtime involving the chase to find the Russian oligarch’s son.

The movie spirals into utter chaos. Ani, Toros, Igor (Yura Borisov), and Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) are not the most competent bunch, and each of them sustain physical injuries and mental strain during the long night that has them following many dead ends. This section of Anora isn’t necessarily the weakest, but it’s the section that makes you notice the film’s lengthier runtime the most. The plot doesn’t advance much during this time, and the film leans hard into its comedic elements. On first viewing, I wasn’t sure why Sean Baker chose to extend this section for as long as it is.

But as the third act pulled me along, it clicked. Ani’s commitment to Vanya is clear as day. She’s been promised the life she always dreamed of, but it relies on her ability to find and maintain Vanya. She’s deeply, deeply in love with him, and she’s convinced he feels the same way. To best show her commitment to him, the film needs to move through these different segments to see Ani’s unabashed love for Vanya despite him fleeing when the two are ambushed at their home.

And because you feel as though you’ve spent one exhausting night with them hunting down Vanya, this section of Anora makes the third act even more powerful and stomach churning. It hits you like a ton of bricks. Sean Baker puts together a few separate sequences that are breathtaking, including a few between Ani and Igor that are some of the more impressive, surprising, and well written scenes in Baker’s filmography.

Baker is excellent at building empathetic characters. They aren’t always the sweetest – Ani is particularly vulgar and hardnosed when dealing with Vanya’s cartoonish family – but you never waver on whether you think they are morally bankrupt. His protagonists are placed in situations where the odds are stacked against them, and often his movies are most effective when their circumstances force them to hit rock bottom. Baker’s two best movies (this and The Florida Project) convey that feeling the clearest.

And combining those characters and themes with a performance as well-rounded as Mikey Madison’s, you can see why Anora won the Palme d’Or in 2024. It’s emotionally vulnerable and filled with creative laugh lines, plot turns that’ll make you gasp, and character actors giving remarkable performances. It kinda has it all. And for a movie stretching 139 minutes, I could see myself diving back in again and again, even if the film’s third act may make it harder to experience Ani’s emotional highs over again knowing how it ends for her.

Anora is a film that announces Sean Baker as one of cinema’s pinnacle filmmakers. It’s a starry movie that puts you through the ringer and makes you feel just about every emotion possible. It’s grandiose filmmaking at a very high degree of execution. Baker likes to explore similar themes and character types with each of his films, and he’s never been so clear as to why he finds these particular stories so fascinating.

Score: 9/10

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