What's it all about, Anora?

There's been so much buzz around Sean Baker's "Anora." It won the Palme d' Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May, it had a successful run at QCinema last November and, as of this writing, it's predicted to earn nominations for best picture, best director, best original screenplay and best actress for the Academy Awards. Critics have called it one of the best films of 2024.

Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) and Ani (Mikey Madison) live it up in Las Vegas in ‘Anora.’ PHOTO FROM AYALA MALLS CINEMAS

Mikey Madison plays "Anora" who prefers to be called Ani. She's a dancer at a New York bar called Headquarters and she's apparently open to doing escort work off hours. She ends up getting assigned to Ivan 'Vanya' Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn) the son of a Russian oligarch. At first, it's all fun and games and partying, Vanya likes her and hires to be his girlfriend for a week, one shenanigan leads to another and the two end up getting married.



Of course, Vanya's ostentatiously rich parents are in Moscow, while he is living a life of decadence from their Brooklyn home. Mayhem ensues when they find out about their son's new wife and they task their right hand man, Toros (Karren Karagulian) and his 'goons' to undo the whole mess. 



Ani is played as someone naïve but also incredibly fearless and mouthy while Vanya is a completely out of touch kid who is never made accountable over anything he buys or breaks. A few people I spoke to about the film saw this as a statement on how the rich and power view (or totally not view) the marginalized.



I actually did have short discussions on the film because I personally felt it didn't live up to all hype I was reading. I found it infuriating, sometimes funny and at times quite sad. My favorite scene actually doesn't involve Ani, but Toros at a baptism. The other people I had discussions with on the film thought the script was exceptionally well written, that Mikey was very good and for some, that it was making a statement.



"Anora" has been called the anti-"Pretty Woman," a twisted Cinderella story. Consider the tagline: "She's looking for her fairytale. He just wants a happy ending." The trailer says, "A love story by Sean Baker."

I wouldn't consider it a love story at all, the tone shifts from drama to comedy to caper. I think part of how I reacted to the film was because — here we are again going with this sex worker with a heart of gold trope. But maybe that's precisely the archetype Baker needed to tell his story.



The discussion on this film continues.

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"Anora" is currently playing exclusively in Ayala Cinemas.