Anora
NEON
Mikey Madison has been slowly making a name for herself ever since she appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. While her turn in this film was memorable for reasons that more had to do with the character’s hyperviolent fate than the performance itself, it sadly typecasted her inside the same beats within Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s fifth installment of Scream. As soon as she appeared on screen, her performance in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood showed that the killer was right before our eyes. This made the reveal the most predictable, lackluster twist this franchise has ever seen up to this point.
But one could tell she could be primed for success if the right director tapped into her innate acting talents. Even in such a terrible movie like Scream, something was boiling inside Madison’s screen presence that seemed longing to emerge. That is, of course, if the right filmmaker understands her most significant strengths and vulnerabilities as one who seems poised to make her mark in Hollywood but never had a complete chance to shine on screen. While many did not know who she was by the time Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (and slowly recognized in Scream) was released, everyone will know her name by the time Sean Baker’s Anora reaches its final, devastating scene.
On the surface, the Palme d’Or winning film (the first American picture to win such an award since 2011, with Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life) is presented as a mile-a-minute fast-paced comedy in the tradition of John Cassavetes, or, more recently, the controlled chaos of Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems. The Safdie comparisons are inevitable: characters talk over one another, the sound design is elaborately frenetic (many dialogues are barely perceptible as a result), elongated scenes naturally build up the tension in perversely comedic ways, and the dramatic apex it leads up to is strikingly cathartic. Moreover, Baker's characters aren’t caricatured versions of people living in New York. They exist this way and talk exactly with the accents shown here in real life (to contrast, the Safdies frequently populate their films with obscure New York legends, such as Mitchell Wenig and Wayne Diamond, for audiences to discover their idiosyncrasies on a large, mainstream scale).
However, Baker does not infuse his story with a splash of mysticism, as the Safdies previously did in Uncut Gems. It’s all rooted in the reality of its titular character (played by Mikey Madison), a sex worker who falls in love with Ivan Zakharov (or Vanya, played by Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of wealthy Russian oligarchs, Nikolai (Aleksei Serebryakov) and Galina Zakharov (Darya Ekamasova). At first, Vanya is more interested in keeping Anora (or ‘Ani,’ as she calls herself) as an object where the two engage in elaborate sex scenes, but he slowly becomes infatuated by her charm and pure heart. Ani, too, begins to be swooned at by Vanya’s outlook on the world and, well, money.
On a trip to Las Vegas, Vanya proposes to Ani, which she accepts. Thinking that she will finally have a good life for herself, the news of Vanya’s engagement begins to circulate within the family circle, with Nikolai asking Vanya’s handler, Toros (Karren Karagulian), and his heavies Igor (Yura Borisov) and Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) to annul the marriage before they arrive in New York to set things right. What follows is constant anxiety for 139 minutes, exacerbated by an overuse of extreme close-ups from cinematographer Drew Daniels, which renders every scene as claustrophobic and suffocating as possible for the viewer.
This non-stop level of adrenaline throughout its runtime ensures many of its key scenes are hilarious. Many audience members will think the same way, especially regarding Baker’s note-perfect sense of comedic timing, effectively building upon small gestures that slowly have an impact on the characters (such as Garnick developing symptoms of an actual concussion and vomiting his guts out in the car after being hit in the head by Ani earlier in the movie). But there’s something far deeper in its frequently rambunctious and loud comedy that reveals a vulnerable, if not distressing, side to Ani. Igor slowly notices this before fully revealing itself in its final scene, making the picture all the more devastating to discover.
Baker’s movie warrants laughter, to be sure. Each supporting member is in total synchronicity with the script’s frequently realist comedy, such as Kagarulian’s Toros, who yells out “NO!” when receiving the news that Vanya’s marriage was indeed legitimate when he’s about to baptize a baby. And as exaggerated as a scene can get, it never goes beyond what the confines of reality boxes all of us in. It captures the characters in their everyday lives who attempt to fix a problem that could blow out of proportion.
With a realistic touch, Madison’s performance operates on a level that few have actually seen realized on screen. Small shifts in her facial expressions unmask her completely, even if her thick accent adds a humorous, ironic tone to the dialogues. One can see the broken personality she attempts to subdue through sex and her boisterous sense of charm, which fools many people. But not Igor, who constantly looks at her with what she qualifies as “rape eyes.” She will soon realize it’s because he’s as broken as her. This on-screen pairing is often funny but slowly destabilizes once Baker puts them in the same frame, making the audience sit with their interiority. Everyone around them has something to say, but they remain silent. What are they hiding beyond the façades they seemingly create in front of everyone else?
Baker, the humanist he is, does not handhold the audience with easy answers. In fact, one has to see through layers of humor to realize how deeply tragic Anora’s story is. The loving montages aren’t so lustful when one learns who Vanya truly is, while the non-stop barrage of comedy is not funny for its titular character. This is a movie that warrants multiple watches because one will first observe the movie as a sickening, anxiety-inducing comedy. However, the second viewing further rewards the viewer with paying attention to Madison’s star-making performance and realizing how the comedy only masks her torn-apart self.
As Ani, Madison taps into a never-before-seen side of herself that’s frequently charming and effervescent in its earlier moments but turns quieter and overwhelmingly tragic when it arrives at its tear-inducing conclusion. The shift is subtly teased and not at all perceptible if one focuses on the in-your-face comedy populating its frames (it’s probably why some despise Baker’s approach, and ones who did not like Uncut Gems may not find much appreciation in this movie). However, Baker forces us to look beyond the chaos and focus on the protagonist, who is dragged into a situation she does not want to be in but unfortunately has to reckon with.
Part of that shift occurs when Ani meets Vanya’s parents, framed with the aesthetic thrills of Brian De Palma. She quickly learns that she has no business being in this family, and her once-indelible passion in front of Vanya is now gone. What follows may be the most gut-wrenching finale of any Baker picture yet, one that will give Madison the flowers she ultimately deserves. While this critic does write for several award-related publications, the 24/7/365 focus on awards (and critics coming out of a movie solely discussing its Oscar prospects and nothing else) needs to stop. However, there’s no way Madison does not receive a more-than-deserved Oscar nomination, and perhaps a win, for her work here.
It's a total revelation for an actor who has slowly made her way to stardom by carefully choosing projects and memorable roles that last an impact on the viewer until her “big break” with Baker, a filmmaker who deftly understands her strengths and showcases them for the world to see. With such a scene as Anora’s ending, most moviegoers’ enjoyment of the film will be repurposed, and many might feel bad for having cackled at some of the real-time situations Baker crafts in this. There’s a methodical, almost mathematical approach to showing audiences acts of repetition to immerse them in its visceral storytelling, not only through the often explicit sex between Anora and Vanya but in Toros careening around the streets of New York to find Vanya and interrogate patrons at various locations once he is missing.
This precision is deeply felt in how the emotional approach to Anora’s finale is calculated. Still, it wouldn’t be made possible without Mikey Madison at the front and center of the movie, informing the audience of the internal pain she has long hidden and is now wrestling with head-on, by way of Igor, for the first time in her twenty-three years of existence. And for the first time since the beginning of her acting career, Mikey Madison is about to experience a profoundly (and well-deserved) life-changing moment that none of us have seen for a breakout star in decades. That’s how powerful she is and how magisterial of an American picture Anora will become.