So this is what happens when your most anticipated movie of award season turns out to be… just ok? Anora, riding a wave of unfair Oscar buzz, is unfortunately not the Best Picture-level flick it has been chalked up to be—though it still delivers plenty of laughs and chaos along the way.
To be clear, Sean Baker is one of my favorite filmmakers. From Tangerine to The Florida Project and Red Rocket, his ability to consistently toss compelling and combustible characters into unpredictable stories is unrivaled. All three have ranked high in my Top Ten lists of their respective years, if memory serves.
Anora, about a stripper/escort who hooks up with a young, rich, and highly unresponsible Russian, gets married on a whim in a Vegas chapel, and subsequently faces the comical wrath of his even richer parents, has a tremendous amount of great scenes, clever lines, and head-turning performances.
Mikey Madison delivers the type of breakthrough performance most actors would kill for; she is sensational here. But she isn’t alone. Mark Eidelshtein is stellar as the batshit crazy Ivan, and the rest of the cast is firing on all cylinders too thanks to the playful screenplay—also a product of Baker’s talent. The screenplay is surprisingly funny and sharp-witted, impressive given how much is happening at any given moment.
And yet—Anora is Baker’s weakest effort to date. Though unpredictable in the moment, in hindsight the story doesn’t have the same lasting power as Baker’s other movies. And at 2 hours and 20 minutes, it feels 30 minutes too long for the material, which plays best as a farcical play of tough personalites gone wrong. There are several scenes that would have been good candidates for cutting (like how many bars and restaurants can they look at in New York to track down a single guy?); Anora would have worked so much better with a leaner edit.
Further, there is a lack of emotional power on display here. While Baker tries to bring it all home in a small but impactful scene to close things out, it feels too small and out of step with the rest of the film to really land—it’s an unearned ending, frankly. The title character is fierce and a dangerous talker—she is a great protagonist, elevated by Madison’s portrayal—but she also deserves everything that happens to her. There is not a lot of sympathy at play here. Further, she really doesn’t do much at all–for much of the movie, she’s just along for the ride, making us wonder why the movie is titled Anora in the first place.
Anora is never boring—far from it—but there are some stretches that are exhausting, even tedious. Kudos to Baker for bringing so many creative characters to life and throwing them together to make magic work, but the intentionally chaotic scenes are a little too frequent.
I’ll take a mid-level Sean Baker movie any day of the week, but it’s a shame that Anora can’t come close to living up to the hype. If you go in expecting what it is–a funny, sometimes hysterical farce–and not a serious awards contender with heavy emotional heft, you’re still likely to be entertained.
Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.