Film of the Week: ‘Anora’ – The Palme D’Or-winning anti-romcom

The director of ‘Tangerine’, ‘The Florida Project’ and ‘Red Rocket’ delivers a brilliant rollercoaster ride – a modern fairytale that doubles as a gut-punch tragedy. It deservedly won this year’s Palme d’Or in Cannes and could very well be on its way to Oscar glory.

Anora, Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning modern fairy tale, is a raucous blast. It’s a kinetic New York City screwball comedy, which updates Pretty Woman, shares the chaotic energy of the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, and disguises a dark heart within an atypical boy-meets-girl.
As tempting as it is to stop the review right there, here’s some context.
Our Cinderella is Anora (Mikey Madison), a feisty 23-year-old exotic dancer and sometime escort who prefers to be called Ani. She works in a strip club in Manhattan and being of Russian descent, gets tasked with entertaining a Moskal.
A sweaty oligarch? A menacing thug?
No, our Prince Charming is a wiry 21-year-old surrounded by vape fumes and sporting a wild mop of hair to rival Timothée Chalamet’s wildest perms. His name’s Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) and he acts like a lovable buffoon: generous, goofy and very, very excitable. He’s basically a puppy in human form.
“I’m always happy,” he says. And so he should be. He spends his time throwing parties and living off his dad’s money.
Their time together, followed by a house call to his luxury pad, culminates in a proposal: Ivan asks Ani to be his “horny girlfriend for the week”, in exchange for $15k. She’s thrilled about the idea and takes a genuine shine to Ivan, who showers her with gifts, trips to exclusive clubs, and a wild jaunt to Vegas. It’s there that the smitten adolescent proposes. He doesn’t want to go back to Russia and work in his father’s company, so a shotgun wedding is his Green Card-nabbing ticket out of that privileged pickle.
“You’ve hit the lotto, bitch,” says one of Ani’s friends at the strip club.
Except that every fairytale needs a villain. In this case, the disruptors are Ivan’s ultra rich parents (Aleksei Serebryakov and Darya Ekamasova), who find out what’s happened and are shamed by their son marrying a “whore”.
They hit DEFCON 1, setting things in motion so that the marriage gets annulled quick sharp, just in time for their arrival in New York. This involves a motley crew showing up at the luxury pad to reason with Ivan.
Things go pear-shaped when the nepo baby hilariously does a runner, leaving Ani with Armenian fixer Toros (Karren Karagulian) and his two stooges Garnick (Vache Towmasyan) and Igor (Compartment No. 6 ’s Yura Borisov).
The contemporary Cinderella story then turns into a no-brakes chase film where an angry Vivian Ward is lumped with the Marx Brothers to locate her husband. From Brighton Beach to Coney Island, Ani is left to fight a lonely battle for a union she believes is grounded in genuine affection.
Madison, previously seen in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Scream, is a revelation here. She owns every single scene, nailing the Brooklyn accent and having an absolute blast with the spitfire insults. She gives a full-throttle performance that should propel her to A-list stardom – and at the very least to a Best Actress Oscar nom.
Eydelshteyn is also excellent. He manages to convincingly win you over with his erratic Tigger act, which quickly changes to reveal princeling to be an imbecilic and spoiled brat. His character is paralleled with the taciturn and Francophonically-challenged “gopnik” Igor, who Borisov injects with manhandling menace but enough sympathy to make you realise he’s just doing a job – whether he likes it or not.
The wild ride they all embark on is non-stop thrilling, with Baker never losing sight of his familiar preoccupation with sex work and thwarted aspirations. His exploration of the American Dream, seen through the prism of empathy linked to class divisions and entitlement, leads to a slight but effective commentary on how the good life is something often given to those who deserve it the least. This culminates in a disarming final scene that hinges on a moment of bittersweet connection.
It hits hard. Baker reveals that his frenetic rollercoaster was actually a tragedy hidden in plain sight. Through the combined alchemy of the performances, the 70s-echoing visuals courtesy of cinematographer Drew Daniels, and the sounds of Take That’s ‘Greatest Day’ and t.A.T.u.’s ‘All The Things She Said’, Anora is so infectiously vibrant that when it swerves away from the comic chaos it leaves you as wrung out as Ani.
We’re reminded that the rags-to-riches tale was inevitably going to crumble due to a harsh reality: there are always those willing to exploit the ones aspiring for more, and those who society chooses to marginalize will always be set up to fail.
Oscar glory to follow Anora’s Palme d’Or win?
That’s a resounding “toush” from us. Sorry, “touché”.
Anora is out now.