Sean Baker's films are all about people living in the margins of society - the neglected, the poor, the invisibles, the underprivileged. What's admirable in what he does is that his films show them as human beings with dreams and aspirations however big and small they are. His subjects are always borderline (un)interesting. There might be a glimpse of beauty in banality. But is it enough to be a subject for a film that costs millions of dollars and all the talents and effort and time? I mean, a lot of shitty, frivolous movies are made all the time. Maybe I'm bitter with everything that's going on in the world. But I have zero interests in seeing an exotic dancer from Coney Island falling in love with a bratty rich Russian kid in a Cinderella type scenario, same as I have zero interest in seeing rich and famous people as subjects in movies.
Mikey Madison plays Ani, the exotic dancer who hit it off with Ivan (Mark Edelstein), a sweet but absurdly rich kid who is her patron one night. Ani wants to keep everything professional, charging him by the night. But once he asks her to be a girlfriend for a week, the money and the mansion and the drugs and champaign are too good to pass up. Better/worse, they fly to Vegas to party and get married on an impulse. When they come back to New York, Ivan's handler, Toro (Karren Karagulian), a middle-aged Albanian, an employee of his oligarchic Russian parents, gets into a full damage control mode. Ivan's parents are flying in, Toro will need to annul the marriage with some court connections Ivan's parents have.
There's no story here for a movie that's over two hours long. Everything is cliché. So, what do we watch in the next hour and a half? Ani freaks out at Toro and his goon Igor and Garnick, Ivan flees from the Brighton Beach mansion. It's all about them going through the Coney Island neighborhood looking for Ivan.
There are some fine visceral scenes that things get very physical and spontaneous. And I love the local details Baker inserts here and there and his direction with many non-actors too. Anora almost reminds me of Good Time and Uncut Gems of Safdie brothers in terms of immediacy and their peasantry. But within the context of the war in Ukraine and demonstrations in Georgia, al Assad fleeing Syria and atrocities in Gaza and Trump's second term (and NYers know about Trump's relations with the Russians in Brighton Beach), Baker doesn't seem to read the room with Anora.
Soon as Ani realizes that there's not going to be a fairytale ending, the grim reality besets - we are duped again by the rich. It doesn't matter if we have dreams and aspirations. We are just playthings for the rich. And that is not a good thing to be reminded of at this climate.
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