ANORA from writer-director Sean Baker is a Palme d’Or winner of the new comedic-thriller Cinderella story. Think a modern day reality but a crazed Pretty Woman. The highlight of the movie is lead actress, a bold and riveting Mikey Madison who plays Ani, a young sex worker at a sex club in New York who finds a young man and impulsively marries him. But when the parents find out – they do everything g to stop it. Everything and that means a wild chase through New York with thugs. Madison gives one of the years best performances. Hands down. She is strong and tough yet vulnerable and a woman. This performance stands out and you won’t be able to forget her in this role.
Baker has been getting rave reviews from both critics and audience but more than the script it is Madison that brings this to that level of acclaim.
Story has Ani working a strip club. She’s smart and wants to make her own money. She finds the job like any other job, get through the night and make your money. She is presented to a young male client and like in Pretty Woman, she is paid to spend a week with as a full service sex worker. Vanya Zakharov played by Mark Eydelshteyn is a rich kid with an obsession with video games. He even likes to play while she’s all over him. In one scene, while he’s playing she reminds him that he has paid for a full hour and is wasting his money on the games. He is wealthy young, self-centered and n needs to be told how to have sex and intimacy. Vanya takes Ani and friends on his private plane to Vegas, where he proposes to her there. She wants to become an American, so why the heck not and they’ve been having a good time. They have lust between them but she also wants to get away from her controlling parents and a 3 karat diamond ring will seal the deal. She agrees to marry him and she probably hopes this will be happy ever with the kid after but the parents are fuming. But – she married a stranger and he married a sex worker. Now the movie turns into a kind of chase thriller. The goal is to annul the mistake. It gets crazy, Ani gets tied up by Armenian thugs as the husband gets away but they now search for him so they can take him before the judge to have the marriage cancelled. Ani sees now that there is ho fairy tale ending coming and they are all there for the rich to take. The storyline then shifts to one of the thugs who starts to see Ani in a different light. You start to root for the thug. This is likely the first man ever to be sincerely kind to her.
The movie is just great where it’s funny and also a poignant look at sex work where we see class definition and the world for women versus men. Gender and class are looked at and leave you thinking. The movie shows us the sex worker in a different light, good and bad. ANORA is truly is worth seeing, heartbreaking, touching, moving, worth the nominations, cliche art times but memorable performances and definitely – an unpredictable ride.
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