“Anora review: Mikey Madison and Sean Baker will leave you cackling”

But let’s take a step back from last-minute charter flights to put the rules of this crazy oddity into context. The film, marketed somewhat deceptively as a love story, begins with a romance of sorts: Ani is both an exotic dancer and an escort working in deep Brooklyn when her rudimentary Russian lessons (which help with the nearby clientele) pay off . A high-roller with a big bank account and limited English skills wants an American woman to please him. Young Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) is nerdy, irritable and visibly spoiled by a life of coddling. He is the son of Russian oligarchs with an inconspicuous income. He is also impressed by Ani’s zest for life and liveliness, just as she is thrilled that he is paying for her to spend a week with him in Las Vegas.

Maybe it’s the champagne and the bright lights, or just the fact that she’s the first woman to tell the little idiot that he’s bad at sex and needs to improve, but Ivan is blown away… and hey, they are in Las Vegas. So of course they get married. But when the bride and groom return to New York for a winter honeymoon by the sea at his parents’ house, everything quickly goes wrong. Apparently Mom and Dad have seen him change his relationship status online, and while they’re back in Moscow, their henchmen are dispatched to effect a quiet, no-fuss breakup. But in the following two hours nothing is calmer or more relaxed, except for the incredible entertainment value.

Baker is a hero of modern indie weirdness that feels both familiar and different than anything done before. He is the same director who gave us Red rocket in 2021 and The Florida Project in 2017. Anora is similarly stealthy in showing how human and sweet the film can be, despite its obvious dalliances with the scary and sensational. The film plays with the conventions of both the erotic thriller and of course the gangster film, but at its core it is a screwball comedy with a twist.

An example of this is a scene where poor, run-down Toros – the most pathetic and repressed fixer I’ve ever seen in a movie – tries to get his henchmen to reason with Ani and explain why their Marriage must end. A sequence that could instead be full of fear has a surreal weirdness to it as little Ani screams, kicks and, at least temporarily, cajoles her oppressors into submission. Later, when the same characters stroll the promenades on a brisk January day, it is difficult to determine who is the leader as the balance of power becomes increasingly blurred.

Alongside them, Baker and his film walk the line between plausibility and philanthropic silliness. The film’s success lies in the warmth that Madison radiates and a script that finds joy in what is ultimately a rather cold production. This is, after all, the story of a low-income call girl who is bought and misled by an immature nepo babe and then spends most of the 140 minutes trying to avoid rejection by her powerful family. Still, there’s such empathy among most of the characters, including disgruntled sidekick Igor (Yura Borisov), that the film achieves an unlikely innocence. It’s sometimes as bright as those lonely buoys floating on the horizon.

This may be news to Ani, a young woman whose brashness betrays a less-than-happy background and childhood, but Madison is so good at channeling her character’s natural acting instincts that the film itself becomes one A kind of magic trick is created and the illusion of crazy wholeness is created from a story and a figure that is otherwise covered by an eternal gray skyline. The environment may be gloomy, but the effect is shimmering.