by Elisa Giudici
Sean Baker takes the Palme d'Or for "Anora" © Sameer Al Doumy / AFP
“I've been working towards this goal for thirty years.” So says Sean Baker as he leaps from his seat in the Lumière theater upon hearing the announcement of his Palme d’Or victory. He thanks Francis Ford Coppola and David Cronenberg, dedicates his film to sex workers, and champions indie cinema meant to be experienced in theaters -- the best experience, he says, “despite what some tech multinationals want us to believe.”
He knows his life as a filmmaker is about to change. The victory of Anora is the culmination of a long journey for a filmmaker who has merged a vibrant, funny, commercial approach with serious themes and auteur rigor. From his speech—one of the best ever delivered by a Palme winner—it’s clear that he is a great storyteller first and foremost...
Yet the story Sean Baker tells is, at its core, always the same: it is about those who live under the injustices of an America where the American Dream is dead. Far from the pornography of poverty and misery, in the eyes of children and the crystal-clear laughter of porn stars, Baker has always depicted people who live life to the fullest, who bite into it with their teeth and cling tenaciously to hope. Anora is the film that brings this long discourse to a new level of maturity, doing something almost never seen, with a finale that brands itself into your mind, launching a future star in Mikey Madison.
Anora (Mikey Madison) is the titular protagonist. A 23-year-old New Yorker of European immigrant descent, she understands Russian because it was the language her grandmother spoke to her. She lives with her sister after her parents' divorce. Even though she calls herself an “erotic dancer,” Anora is a full-fledged sex worker. Anora opens as a brilliant and contemporary Pretty Woman, a cheeky romantic comedy with palpable, tangible, carnal prostitution. The film doesn't lose its sparkle as it transforms into one of those dark comic thrillers where crazed protagonists scurry around cities. It's set in a New York in which ultra-rich foreigners navigate working-class neighborhoods inhabited by second and third-generation immigrants and the small shops of Coney Island. Morphing from romcon to thriller it then becomes an extraordinary, emotional, and memorable commentary on American socioeconomic realities. Anora is the symbol of a generation that scrapes by and never loses hope, fighting tooth and nail, with their bodies, to change their lives.
The film recalls other movies but has its own unique appeal as it glides from one genre to another with mastery, never losing its verve and tone, even in its most hairpin turns. It consumes like a blockbuster but leaves much behind because it’s auteur cinema at its core: substantial, independent, and combative.
ANORA © Cannes Film Festival
Providing the illusory hope and instant gratification is pornography and sex. Anora works as a lap dancer at a club called HeadQuarters. She is confident, beautiful, young, and irresistible. Since she speaks some Russian, she’s paired with a wealthy, very young client who speaks little English, and with whom she quickly forms a bond. Like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) rents the girl for a week, for companionship in bed and around the city. The boy is sweet, enthusiastic, indolent, and spoiled: the young son of a Russian oligarch brings Anora into a world with different rules, where money and people are valued with unusual metrics.
A notable series of interactions unfold between the sheets, but also at parties, in lazy afternoons on the couch playing PlayStation 5, nights out in clubs, trips to Las Vegas, and the inevitable wedding at a 24-hour chapel. Towards the end of the first segment, we witness the culmination of a strange rom-com that begins with a hot lap dance and finally reaches the first gentle kiss, in a spectacular house with a sea view.
However, as you may have guessed, the love dream of Ivan and Anora proves fragile. Anora follows the progressive disillusionment of its protagonist, forced to chase Ivan for an entire day along with three handlers sent by the boy’s parents to convince or force him to annul the marriage. In search of annulment documents and the fugitive Ivan, the quartet brings to life a frantic thriller, rich with unexpected turns, where everyone talks over each other, shouts, and lies in wait to catch Ivan and end the forced cohabitation.
Here Baker hides in plain sight a precious gem, the presence of Russian actor Yuriy Borisov, an acting powerhouse already discovered thanks to the award-winning Finnish film Compartment No. 6. He plays the role of the sidekick Igor, who stays silent and keeps an eye on Anora, on the edges of the plot but always present. The others argue, shout, and confront; Igor does his job, silently. His presence seems superfluous, but it’s an investment that pays off in the end.
The trio of young actors in Anora are all truly excellent, but Mikey Madison is simply exceptional. Not only because she gives her uninhibited all, but because she manages to maintain a phenomenal rhythm and energy throughout the film, winning over the viewer, drawing them into her world, overcoming their prejudices. We will undoubtedly see her again soon elsewhere, because this role will change her life (and possibly bring her to the Oscars).
It all culminates in a masterful final scene that is seared into this viewer's memory, where bittersweet tenderness and mute despair reveal that perhaps, just perhaps, there is still some reason to hope for a better future. In this conclusion, Baker betrays Anora's dreams. In a way Anora is the ideal 'sequel' to Red Rocket. Both films depict sex, pornography, and prostitution as the last functioning social elevators in the United States of America. Baker’s sex workers are not sad but brilliant, aware of their value and their bodies, ready to believe in love and scream, scratch, bite, and fight to defend what they have achieved. The problem, Baker explains, is that the United States increasingly belongs to the rich: both the native-born and the wealthy oligarchs who can trample reservations, courtrooms, laws, and others' feelings by waving money instead of passports. Sex may climb a few rungs on the social ladder, if only for the duration of a film.
Anora will be released by NEON in the US. It's their fifth straight Palme d'Or winning release after Parasite, Titane, Triangle of Sadness, and Anatomy of a Fall.