In the dazzling new film Anora, director Sean Baker spins a raucous, unconventional Cinderella story that cements his place among today’s greatest filmmakers. This Palme d’Or-winning comedy drama follows Ani (Mikey Madison), a savvy New York exotic dancer who marries Vanya (Mark Eidelstein), the hapless son of a Russian oligarch, in a whirlwind of passion, champagne, and cocaine. But as their intoxicating fantasy collides with cold, hard reality, Ani must fight tooth and nail to avoid being discarded like yesterday’s fairy tale.
A Breakout Turn by Mikey Madison
While Baker’s deft handling of the film’s explosive material is a triumph, Anora is equally a showcase for 25-year-old Mikey Madison. Cast in her first lead role, Madison delivers a performance for the ages as the complicated, uncompromising Ani. By turns alluring and abrasive, calculating and recklessly authentic, Madison’s dancer is as messy and magnetic as real life. As one source close to the production put it:
Mikey completely inhabits Ani – her toughness, her survival instincts, her hidden fragility. It’s a star-making role, but there’s nothing artificial about it. She is this woman.
Opposite Madison, Broadway actor Mark Eidelstein impresses as the clumsy, coddled Vanya. While he initially seems like a one-note trust fund brat, Eidelstein gradually sketches a more pathetic and strangely sympathetic figure. As Baker has shown in his prior films like The Florida Project and Red Rocket, he has a rare gift for spotting raw talent and drawing out achingly human portraits from the margins of society.
From Candy-Colored Romance to Gritty Realism
Anora opens in a glitzy, champagne-soaked haze as Ani and Vanya embark on their banter-filled, highly transactional fling. The early sequences have the energetic, neon-lit pop of a music video or fashion shoot. But as their impulsive Vegas wedding gives way to the harsh light of day, Baker sharply pivots the film into darker, more volatile territory.
In the film’s bravura centerpiece, a pair of menacing Russian fixers descend on Vanya’s Brighton Beach mansion, intent on muscling Ani out of the picture. But they’ve severely underestimated their target. What follows is a wild, slapstick explosion of violence, with Madison’s Ani kicking, biting and decimating everything in her path as the men haplessly attempt to subdue her. It’s uproarious, unsettling and oddly inspiring, a primal scream of a sequence in a film unafraid to color outside the lines.
Shattering Cinderella Illusions
As Anora reaches its jaw-dropping final act, it’s clear Baker is interested in more than just shaking up a classic fairy tale. In its unsparing depiction of sex work, class divides and the slippery line between transactional relationships and real intimacy, the film forces us to question the stories we tell ourselves – both in life and in art. Do we demand glossy, unrealistic happy endings to avoid confronting harsher truths? To what extent are we all, in some way, playing roles and trading fantasies, whether on stage or in marriage?
While the film’s final minutes have polarized some viewers with their brazen subversion of rom-com tropes, Baker and Madison earn their audacious finish. In a go-for-broke performance and a dazzlingly ambitious film, they leave it all on the dance floor. Anora is many things – an uproarious comedy, a poignant love story, a ferocious dismantling of classist and sexist myths. But above all, it’s a defiant announcement of two major talents: a filmmaker and actress in fierce control of their craft.
As the film’s relentless momentum finally stills, we’re left with an indelible image of Madison’s Ani, bloodied but unbowed. She may not get a fairy-tale ending, but she’s far more than a damsel to be saved or a cautionary tale to be discarded. She’s the author of her own messy, glorious, uncontainable story – and it’s one you won’t soon forget.
