Writer-director, and usually producer and editor as well, Sean Baker, has been making films for almost 25 years but audiences only started to sit up and take notice of his work in 2015 with the film TANGERINE. The story about a transgender sex worker who discovers that her pimp-boyfriend has been cheating on her was a hit with both critics and audiences, and it took in almost US$1 million at the box office off a production budget of just $100,000. That’s what producers call a “good investment”. Baker continued his theme of showcasing the lives of sex workers in 2017 with THE FLORIDA PROJECT and again in 2021 with RED ROCKET. Baker’s latest film, ANORA, also deals with a sex worker and this one may just be his best film yet.

Ani (Mikey Madison, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD), is a young stripper living in Brighton Beach, the area of Brooklyn where many Russian speakers also reside. As she is the only stripper in her strip club who can speak Russian, her boss introduces her to Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), the 21-year-old son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, who is in the US ostensibly to study. Vanya is a party boy though, and he hires Ani to have sex with him, which leads to him paying her to stay with him for a week in his parents’ mansion in Brooklyn. On a whim, Vanya decides to jet off to Las Vegas with his posse in tow, and he brings Ani along too. There, he proposes marriage to her and the pair ties the knot in one of that city’s many

chapels. Back at the mansion, news reaches Russia of Vanya’s nuptials to a prostitute he just met and his parents send Vanya’s godfather, Toros (Karren Karagulian), and his two henchmen, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), to get the marriage annulled asap. Ani, however, is not going to give up on her fairytale romance without a fight.

There is a lot that is really good about ANORA. Baker does a fabulous job balancing out the story’s humour with the grittiness of the life that Ani lives along with the type of people she comes in contact with in her line of work. Madison, in her biggest role to date, brings Ani to life, convincingly embracing Ani’s lifestyle and making her a very believable and sympathetic character, first as she thrusts and sways her body in service to her clients, then as the strong-willed but ultimately vulnerable bride who isn’t going to give up on her dream so easily. Where the film stumbles, however, is with its length. It’s about 20 minutes longer than it needs to be. The abduction scene certainly has some wonderful cinematic moments but it could have been tightened up some and still achieve the same effect. The search for Vanya, though, is far too protracted than it deserves to be. We get the hint. He’s missing. No one in Brighton Beach cares. Move on.

ANORA premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May where it took home the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or. Last year’s winner, ANATOMY OF A FALL, was nominated for five Academy Awards and it won for Best Original Screenplay. Could ANORA follow suit and rack up a bunch of Oscar noms? I think there’s a very good chance that it will.

ANORA opens in Hong Kong on Thursday, October 31st. If it weren’t for its length, it would definitely have ended up on my list of favourite films for the year. Now we’ll have to wait and see.

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