Anora movie review: Frenetic screwball comedy with oodles of heart

Sean Baker’s characters live on the edges of “polite society”, derided or, at best, ignored by the all-too-busy and all-too-important people breezing right past them.

In The Florida Project, tourists on their way to Disney World don’t pay any attention to the socio-economically disadvantaged people just outside the walls of the happiest place on Earth.

From street hustlers, sex workers and former porn stars to delivery men and single mums living in a motel, Baker sees them and loves them.

The American filmmaker’s movies are empathy machines, compassionate portraits of marginalised communities, of people who made their own “choices” to live lives the more puritanical disdain. His films are also fun, colourful and frenetic and make no apologies or judgment for their sometimes raucous, sometimes inappropriate heroes.

For someone whose breakout film was the 2015 Tangerine, shot on iPhones and centred on a transgender sex worker, Baker’s status as a frontrunner for an Oscar may surprise some. But then again, Anora is a surprising film.

Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, Anora is a winsome, screwball and kinetic movie that elicits laughter and tears, and all the emotions in between.

It’s a performance showcase, it’s a technical feat in pacing and editing and it’s an achievement in humanist storytelling. It’s, undeniably, one of the best films of the year.

Anora is Ani (Mikey Madison), a 23-year-old stripper from Brighton Beach, a Russian neighbourhood of New York City borough Brooklyn. She’s sassy, confident and has long tinsel strands in her hair.

One night at work, her boss pairs her with a new client, Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch who lives in his parent’s gauche steel-and-glass mansion by himself. With few responsibilities and even fewer inhibitions, Vanya is the ultimate manifestation of id. He plays video games, leaps on his enormous bed as if it’s a jumping castle and does whatever he wants.

Ani and Vanya hit it off and on a spontaneous trip to Las Vegas, the two elope. Ani wants to believe in Vanya’s declarations that it’s real love, and she lets herself believe in the fantasy. It could be a modern day Cinderella story, if that’s where it, like Pretty Woman, ended.

Vanya’s folks are not so happy that their scion, who’s supposed to return to Russia to work in his father’s business - the very last thing Vanya wants - has hitched himself to an American dancer.

They send in their emissaries — the exasperated Toros (Karren Karagulian) and his goons Igor (Yura Borisov) and Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) — to force an annulment.

Anora is a kaleidoscopic experience that moves with the whirlwind speed and cacophonous energy of a Safdie brothers movie (Good Times, Uncut Gems) but without the torturous anxiety.

It’s spiky but tender and no one is ever quite who you think they are, not because they have hidden agendas (it’s actually very open-hearted) but because Baker doesn’t just telegraph everything that’s going to happen.

It’s a rare film that genuinely feels effortlessly unpredictable and chaotic, and it’s one you don’t want to anticipate or outsmart. Anora wants you to go along with the ride and it gives you plenty of reasons to do so.

Anora is a career-making turn from Madison, who carries the weight of a character whose cracking spirit and brassiness hides her innocence and vulnerability, a shell that’s not yet hardened but which started to come in at too early an age.

Without spoiling anything, you don’t realise the full strength of her performance until the final scene, in which Madison seizes the viewer and holds them before they even realise what’s going on. It’s an extraordinary moment.

That ending also captures Baker’s masterful balance of zany comedy and heart. You won’t forget it anytime soon.

Rating: 5/5

Anora is in cinemas on Boxing Day