If half the folks who paid to see Demi Moore in “The Substance” take a chance on the bracing new seriocomedy “Anora,” they’ll be far better rewarded, this time by a sharp and finally moving story of one woman’s options in extreme circumstances.
They’re different films with different aims, of course. Both caused a stir at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Subsequently, in a year of serious uncertainty for any movie launching a theatrical run and risking a hasty wait, what just happened exit, “The Substance” found an audience, even with its teeny, familiar ideas about the commodification of female flesh. “Anora” deserves that same adventurous audience.
So has nearly everything its writer-director, Sean Baker, made en route to “Anora,” which won top prize at Cannes. Baker’s recent work includes the breathless scramble “Tangerine” (2015), about a transgender sex worker on the hunt for a pimp who owes her money; the Oscar-nominated heartbreaker “The Florida Project” (2017); and “Red Rocket” (2021); a nervy and underseen comedy about a onetime porn star returning to his Texas hometown, broke but full of hope.
Sex workers, societal cast-offs, lives lived in the margins and shadows of American dreams: These are just three of Baker’s ongoing preoccupations. As a storyteller, he’s a fiend for propulsion. He’s generous with his wit; leads and supporting players alike get their due. It’s not perfect, but “Anora” is a touching comic and dramatic odyssey, driven by a terrific performance by Mikey Madison in the title role.
We met Madison’s Ani, whose Russian-derived name is Anora, at the Manhattan lap dance emporium where she works. “Anora” is both a ground-level New York City movie, one of the best in recent years, and a fancifully improbable romance revealing a darker side as it goes. Amid the club’s array of lap dances in progress, Ani bumps into a drunk and gangly young Russian who says he’s 21. He jumps on Ani’s suggestion of heading up to the VIP room for a private session. Whoosh! In mere minutes of screen time, this tough, lippy Brighton Beach woman has moved in with Ivan for a week’s stay, for hire, at the waterfront Brooklyn mansion decorated in what might be called Modern Russian Underworld Billionaire style. “Welcome to my humble aboard,” Ivan says, his English swapping “aboard” for “abode.”
Ani, who speaks pretty fair Russian (her grandmother came from there, we learn), finds herself charmed by this louche child of obvious if mysterious privilege. “Are you happy?” she asks him at one point early on. “Yeah! I’m always happy!” he answers, and the way actor Mark Eydelshteyn says it, you know he’s not lying. Both he and Madison deliver portrayals in full-body expressivity; at one point, in bed, Ivan executes a backward somersault that somehow captures everything about this person’s guileless enthusiasms.
The first 45 minutes or so of “Anora” plays like a screwball-comedy marriage of Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme and Preston Sturges, hustling to keep up with the sheer velocity of Ani and Ivan as they speed-skate across their days and nights together, with friends or without. They culminate in a quick but momentous trip to Las Vegas. Suddenly, with an all-night chapel certificate to prove it, they’re married.
Then: trouble. From Russia, with something other than love, Ivan’s fearsome parents — billionaires, underworld-connected, exhausted by the trouble their son’s gotten into his whole young, dumb, zero-consequences life — send in their New York-based goons to annul the union and send Ani packing. “Anora” shifts into a new, minor chord key at this point. Ivan flees his parents’ home, leaving Ani in the lurch and provoking an all-night pursuit and some memorably chilly scenes of winter in Brooklyn along the Coney Island boardwalk and thereabouts.
Ani can’t quite believe what’s happening; against clear odds, she’s determined to make this marriage work somehow. (Parts of the movie are less psychologically realistic than others.) She’s fighting to take control of this story, as swerve-prone as the famous Cyclone roller coaster director Baker features at one point. The crucial climactic scenes rely on Madison, who exhibits exceptional range throughout, and the equally superb Yura Borisov as Igor, the cryptic, empathetic henchman.
Where this movie lands will not please everyone. Debates about the story’s resolution, on Reddit and elsewhere, have generated some unusually thoughtful online discourse. This, I think, is no accident; Baker’s film warrants it. “Anora” stalls a bit in its second of three sections, and probably it’s 10 or 15 minutes longer than needed. Small matters. The rhythmic change-ups throughout are extraordinary, with Baker again serving as his own editor.
What we have, in the end, is no less a fairy tale about the Rich One and the Poor One, the payer and the payee, than, say, “Pretty Woman.” But it’s our “Pretty Woman,” for our time, with unexpected ripples of real feeling — and thanks to Madison, real stardom in the making.
“Anora” — 3.5 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for strong sexual content throughout, graphic nudity, pervasive language, and drug use)
Running time: 2:19
How to watch: Premieres in theaters Oct. 25
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
