Film Review | Exotic Cinematic Dance

Under the opening credits of Sean Baker’s bawdy and bedazzling film Anora, we encounter a perverse variation on the theme of a chorus line. The critical difference is that cinematographer Drew Daniels’s camera tracks a line of lap dancers visually at work, gyrating in the dim-lit demimonde of the Headquarters, an exotic dance (a k a strip) club. This is where we meet our cross-fated heroine of the film’s title, Anora (although she goes with the more downhome nickname Annie).

Deep into this madcap ride of a film-referential film, Baker shows us the same bare-bottomed chorus line, but this time hastily fleeing from their posts, drawn to the promise of a catfight between two dancers. Many forces, twisted expectations and genre manipulations — including neo-noir, soft porn, and dark comedy — feed into the finest film yet in Baker’s deft and shamelessly provocative filmography. Not for nothing did it earn this year’s prestigious Palme d’Or Award at Cannes.

As he demonstrated with his transgressive yet somehow tender-hearted films The Florida Project and Red Rocket, Baker has a sneaky and unique touch when it comes to defying expectations. Throughout Anora, he achieves a remarkable rope-a-dope by triggering our well-trained anticipation of violence and sucker-punching us with humor and disarming heart. His mean streets aren’t as mean as they pretend to be, as fumbling thuggery yields to Keystone Cop–ish pratfalls and our fears of Russian mafia mayhem may be a false narrative.

But the capers send out conflicting signals, and we’re not sure whether to cower or snigger. That paradox alone is worth the price of admission, in an era of formulaic film/TV aesthetics. Consider a kinship to Coen Brothers, Tarantino, and the fizzier side of Scorsese, à la Casino.

Anora is your not-so-basic love, sex, and fear and loathing tale. Boy (vapid rich Russian playboy Vanya, played with proper abandon by Mark Eidelstein) meets and pays for Annie’s exotic dancing service, which upgrades/downgrades to sexual services. Something resembling young passionate love and lust ensue, as does a Vegas marriage. After the boy’s über-wealthy Russian family takes offense at the union and goes to intense lengths — and an extended shakedown and cat-and-mouse chase to annul the union.

The story arc of the first section — a steadily building crescendo of young hedonistic excess and a wild honeymoon montage (moontage?) — takes a sharp dark turn in the bulk of the film, but bubbling pockets of levity line the path. Standard script structure deviates again in a final and surprisingly sweet denouement.

There are plenty of angles of admiration triggered by Baker’s brilliant bad behavior film, clearly one of the great American films of this year, but the titular star takes the prize. All eyes and senses are fixed on the lead actress Mikey Madison (Better Things), who will be paid tribute at the 2025 Santa Barbara International Film Festival and whose performance is nothing short of stunning. Nuances count for plenty as she dives into the character of a young woman hardened by a past we never quite understand, but whose proximity to actual love softens her tough resolve.

This critic’s verdict: touché (pronounced “toosh” by the caring goon character Igor). See trailer here.