Anora Review: LFF 2024

The ultimate crowd pleaser, Anora is one of the best films of the year

American writer/director Sean Baker has made a career out of films that seek to destigmatize stories about people living and working on the perceived ‘wrong side of the tracks.’ From Tangerine’s transgender sex workers to Red Rocket’s out of work porn star his irresistible stories have always positively centred the marginalized, and his latest, Anora, follows these same lines.

Ani is a stripper in the Russian neighbourhood of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Because she speaks a little Russian her manager frequently sets her up with Russian speaking clients, and so it is at her strip club that she first meets oligarch’s son Vanya. Immature Vanya is carefree and extremely generous with his money so Ani starts seeing him for sex, and before long he offers to pay her to come live with him for a week and act as his girlfriend.

The two have an incredible week together, hitting it off, falling in love, and running away to Vegas to get married. But if Ani thinks she’s suddenly got it made her Cinderella story is rudely interrupted when Vanya’s parents hear about the marriage. Unhappy with the choice their son has made, they send their fixer Toros and his goons Garnick and Igor to force the couple into getting an annulment. Despite his earlier romantic talk Vanya is useless at standing up to his parents, so it falls to Ani to fight for her man and her money.

The comparisons to Pretty Woman will seem obvious, but Anora is what that film could have been if it hadn’t been afraid to actually feature a frank depiction of sex work and the people that do it. Mikey Madison’s Anora (or Ani as she prefers to be known) is NOT a woman that needs rescuing. Foul mouthed, feisty and completely in control, she is a woman who knows exactly what she wants and will do everything possible to make sure she gets it.

Baker’s great success has always been in writing incredibly watchable characters, and every character in Anora is frankly just perfect. Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) is an adorable fool while his exasperated handlers are the best side characters you’ll see this year. Yet it’s Mikey Madison’s bold, star making turn that steals the show. From the slapstick comedic moments where she gets into fights with the henchmen through to moments of vulnerability where this young woman realises she has been thrown into a world she really doesn’t understand, she smashes each and every emotion out of the park.

A riotously entertaining, pulsatingly energetic film scored by perfect needle drops, Anora is just straight up a good time. That it manages to slyly sidle in a message about the irresponsibly cruel way the rich ‘use’ the poor for their own entertainment without losing it’s carefree non-preachy attitude makes it a masterful work. As Baker guides us to a surprisingly compassionate, heartbreaking yet hopeful ending you really start to feel that this movie is more than just fun. It’s truly remarkable. (Something clearly felt at the Cannes Film Festival too, where it was awarded the Palm D’Or.)

Propelled by a sure to be awards nominated script and sensational central performance, it’s impossible not to fall in love with this raunchy, sweary, chaotic romantic drama. This is Sean Baker at his very best, Anora is one of the best films of the year.

Anora is playing as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2024. It will be out in UK cinemas from 1^st November 2024