Anora

Sean Baker wastes absolutely no time thrusting you into the world inhabited by Anora (Mikey Madison). The very first frame walks us down the line of men getting lap dances from her co-workers, the exotic dancers of Headquarters, before landing on her doing the same. She immediately establishes herself as incredibly good at what she does, effortlessly selling men on a private dance where she can make the big(ger) bucks. She's high energy and quick witted and very New York, an aggressive "don't take no shit from nobody" type. The filmmaking matches her attitude, only letting up for a brief moment at her apartment after her shift, before she seizes on the opportunity to made some quick cash by paying a house call to a high roller she met at the club the night before named Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), who turns out to be the son of a stupidly wealthy Russian oligarch. His life is an endless whirlwind of hedonism, which does as much to entrance Ani as his money and the dopiness she interprets as wit. We know the turn has to come at some point: the flurry of activity and rapid fire dialog, a quick patter very recognizable in Baker's last decade of work, is absolutely exhausting, and the swirling camerawork does nothing to let the audience off the hook. But Baker sticks with this far longer than you expect, far more than is comfortable, sticking you right in the middle of this journey with Ani and Vanya in an effort to help you understand why she agreed to marry him after knowing him for all of two weeks.

And you do understand. The movie begins as an absolute delight, from its playfulness to the music to the neon-drenched party atmosphere, be it at a club or the bananas New Years party Vanya hosts. She's through the looking glass from the moment she steps into his mansion for the first time, surrounded by excess which contrasts starkly with her own modest apartment and mundane considerations, such as picking up the milk. Vanya's world is unreality made manifest, and enough to dazzle anyone. Which makes the crash so much more visceral.

Once we meet the trio of Russian associates sent by Vanya's parents to break up Ani and Vanya, you'd expect the tone to completely flip, turning this into a thriller or crime drama or something else. But the incompetence of goons Garnick and Igor (Vache Tovmasyan and Yuriy Borisov), and the insistent impotence of their boss Toros (Baker mainstay Karren Karagulian), ensure that the comedy remains high throughout, even as the situations become more dire. Instead of descending into an intense drama, we get a bunch of big comedy set-pieces, from a desperate and messy scuffle which destroys Vanya's place to a frantic twenty or thirty minute search across the city which would be skipped in favor of a montage in any other movie. Not only does the length of scenes force us to sit with the characters and the implications, mulling over what this is all for. It also provides ample opportunity for laughs, from Garnick constantly whining about his broken nose to Igor's social awkwardness to Ani's razor-sharp clapbacks and penchant for saying exactly the right thing to annoy the crap out of everybody.

Because first and foremost, this is a comedy. Baker's movies have always been wickedly and darkly funny, but there's a way in which this one weaponizes its comedy to distract you from the true nature of the situation in which Ani finds herself. To re-emphasize, she's mixed up with Russian oligarchs and gangsters whose money comes from unknown places, but is unimaginably vast. They're willing to use violence to get their way, although much of the comedy comes from their hesitance to do so. They break into her and Vanya's home, tie her up, and kidnap her. But those long scenes diffuse the sense of danger by highlighting their exasperation and uncertainty over using more extreme methods, even as they increase the sense of tension. From the time Garnick and Ignor burst in, until Ani leaves with them and Toros, around twenty or thirty minutes has elapsed in the theater. It makes for a strange tone which admittedly takes a little while to lock into. It also provides more opportunities for Baker to sprinkle in small moments pointing to what will become the ultimate concern of the film, which is the fundamental project of Baker's career: the experience of class in America.

He's rarely had us spend any time with the wealthy in his films, and he does so here to demonstrate their unsuitability for getting along in the world, and to emphasize their treatment of people working in the service industry. Vanya is time and time again shown to be child-like buffoon, with no care about anything nor understanding of the world, except the knowledge his parents' money and power insulate him from consequences (at least until they judge he's gone too far). We barely even get the sense that he thinks about Ani, just that he thinks she's hot and enjoys having sex with her, further highlighted by his lack of concern for her enjoyment in the bedroom. Despite his protestations, it would seem he views her more as an accessory, a shiny object to take around with him to impress his friends, and eventually a way to stay in the US permanently, all crystallized by his abandonment of her in a moment of crisis. He disregards their housekeepers, and when Toros runs into them after the apartment has been ripped apart, Baker's camera lingers on his mere $100 tip/bribe to clean it up no questions: a big tip for an average person to leave, sure, but nothing for a billionaire family, especially in light of the destruction the crew is about to walk in on.

As the plot slowly unfolds, it becomes clear that the gangsters aren't entirely unsympathetic. Toros answers to Vanya's parents , Garnick is Toros' guy, and Igor is the "muscle" hired by Garnick. The further you get from the family, the closer they come to being in a comparable financial situation to Ani, to the point that you slowly watch as Igor begins to sympathize more and more with her. Sure, the money and social pressure is such that he can't act on it, but it comes through in little gestures: a scarf offered to keep her warm, a blanket pulled over her when she's passed out, or sharing that his apartment is not his own - it's his grandmother's. He alone recognizes what the dissolution of this relationship will mean for her, and seeks to offer some of the only bits of kindness she experiences through the whole ordeal. True, this is coming from the guy who pinned her down and tied her up to start the day, so she understandably wants beyond nothing to do with him, even balking at sharing the back seat of the van with him. But there's something to be said for his relentless humanity in contrast to the chaos swirling around them, especially as it becomes more and more apparent that Ani's tough-as-nails attitude doesn't mean she is unfeeling, and that mask can only hold for so long.

While the structure will keep you off balance, the plot itself isn't particularly complex or new. It's well executed, but it works because of the maelstrom surrounding it. Baker continues his trend of finding ways to place you in an unexplored part of a recognizable city: they're definitely in New York, but it looks nothing like the New York in any other picture. As with his other films, it's more than just a quirk. He always uses it to emphasizes the nature of his stories as the events happening all around us that we never see. Here, it takes on the additional function of deepening the fantastical world in which Ani finds herself.

But of course, given how heavily reliant on relationships and character interactions the story is, it's the performances that really make the film. The entire supporting cast at Headquarters do a phenomenal job of adding color such that we come to understand Ani more deeply. Eydelshteyn perfectly embodies the spoiled, immature rich kid who still answers to his parents like a bashful little boy, while managing to keep his world kinetic enough that those within it can justify their willful ignorance. Karagulian somehow manages to keep an air of authority about himself even as he's repeatedly thwarted by people simply and smugly telling him "No". Of the supporting cast, its Barisov who stands out amongst the rest, aided by the transformation his character goes through from bumbling tough to friendly but awkward weirdo. That journey makes him a bit hard to root for, yet you find yourself more sympathetic to the guy by the end.

Unsurprisingly, it's Madison's performance that most impresses. From the moment she appears on screen, she is absolutely electric, never once showing any signs of discomfort in a role that requires her to leave it all on the floor. Sure, there's the impressive physical feats inherent in stripping, and the boldness of the movie's unflinching and raw portrayal of human sexuality and intimacy, far outpacing anything Baker (or much of the modern American industry) has previously put on screen, during which her and Eydelshteyn demonstrate and incredible amount of chemistry and passion. But more impressive and engaging is how emotionally inexhaustible she is. Ani is incredibly aggressive, rabidly defending all she holds dear with a ferocity foreign to those of us for whom daily survival is not a particular struggle. And there is not a single moment at which you question that portrayal. It never feels like a put on, in large part because of the subtle ways it shifts over the course of the film. There are moments in which she quiets down, clearly taking stock the situation and re-evaluating what her best path forward is before beginning her push towards it. But each time, the light behind her eyes is a bit dimmer, despite the fire coursing through her veins running just as hot. Which is incredibly important to the movie working: otherwise, you'd wonder why she allows the day to play out the way it does. Instead, you see in real time as this woman realizes the reality of her situation, and how despite it leaving her exhausted, she's still ready to fight for what she knows she deserves. All of which culminates in a powerful final scene, the result of many characters swirling around each other over the past twenty-four hours, and which leaves you with an incredibly powerful image of what the requirement of being "on" all the time does to a person.

Some audiences are sure to bump against the excessive scene length and the stark change in energy from the first to second acts, including a couple fellow theatergoers I heard chatting behind me when the lights came up. If I'm being honest, it took me a while to get into its groove, too, even as I was laughing throughout. But the summation is another monumental work from Baker, another marvelous entry in his series of films to humanize and normalize sex work and its practitioners, less bleak than the previous entries while retaining a darkness nonetheless, and just an absolute blast.