Let’s start with Robert Altman’s 1992 “The Player” and its opening frenetic camera panning sequence: During that hilarious, farcical rapid-fire parade of studio-insider-wannabe sights and sounds, we see a quick pitch to make a film that is deemed as “Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman.” Over three decades later, we’ve actually witnessed a misguided facsimile of “Mean Streets” meets “Pretty Woman.”
In 2024’s “Anora,” writer/director Sean Baker’s presumed intentions fall short, with this latest installment in a body of work that seems to be very much of a tightly circumscribed acquired taste. His indie repertoire follows our marginalized (some might deem low-propensity voter type) ne’er-do-wells, who collectively appear nomadic and vulgar, but occasionally have their quiet interludes that can generate a stylish offset. With an affinity for sex workers and various car tricks, not just limited to front-seat romps and malodorous puking, Baker provides us with a set of tropes that might create a legitimate wow factor for some, but not for this current reviewer.
Baker has now introduced us to a sassy Brooklyn stripper Anora (Mikey Madison). Out of the gate, Anora (Ani) gets wrapped up in the Russian mob through a feckless goofball oligarch’s son (Vanya, played by Mark Eydelshteyn), who fritters away his time and family’s cash on video games, sex (with Ani), drugs, and booze. Somehow (and making no sense … but OK, it’s just a film plot), Ani agrees to underscore her transactional escapades with a Vegas shotgun wedding. The 24/7 partying continues until Vanya’s family back home in Russia becomes informed of (and immediately alarmed at) the marriage of their wayward son to an alleged sex worker. Then, enter the merry band of a mid-level fixer, along with two lower-rung thugs who are summoned to the rescue in order to annul such a union.
What ensues is often dull and sometimes unwatchable in its dogged pursuit of zaniness. The most obviously flawed editing begins with an interminable scene where the henchmen arrive to confront the young couple at Vanya’s modern fortress of a Daddy mansion. After Vanya slips away, we are forced to endure an endless barrage of Ani’s F-bombs and broken living room fixtures amidst her being physically restrained. The subsequent search for Vanya through the wintry seascapes of Coney Island and Brighton Beach has no discernible cinematic value. This tiresome road-trip-like saga continues with a visit from his Russian parents, and the dissolution of the marriage on a Vegas side trip, after being legally stymied from doing so in Brooklyn.
Baker’s dim-witted oligarch underlings, with Ani in tow, never seem to rise above their formulaic mediocrity, including Igor’s (see details below) brief run at some nuance. Eydelshteyn might slightly reflect a modern-day version of Robert DeNiro’s unhinged Johnny Boy in “Mean Streets,” but his character remains razor-thin and literally without much meat on the bone of this wispy young man. In some fairness, nevertheless, we’re introduced to Toros (played by long-time Baker fixture, Karren Karagulian), who’s a Russian Orthodox priest in the middle of conducting a service when he receives the news about Vanya, and then exits on the spot to attend to the boss’s orders from across the pond. This scene at least provides us with a memorable comic clip.
The concluding segment of “Anora” has one of the crew, Igor, escorting Ani back home, where their stoic, smoldering incubation of sexual tension (SPOILER ALERT here) is consummated in his car outside her house, with a fade to black in stark contrast to the falling snow. It appears that many critics are enamored by the finale’s open-ended interpretation, which is further fueled by Baker’s acknowledged inspiration from Federico Fellini’s 1957 “Nights of Cabiria.” However, Ani’s tears of regret vs. newfound redemption vs. whatever (?) steer us into such a sharp U-turn from the previous cartoonish antics that I failed to find this scene provocative or profound in any way. Fellini notwithstanding, this seemed to be no more than Baker’s latest lousy stunt, albeit shrouded in a more sophisticated context.
Although Madison’s recently-minted Ani surely brings it on with spiky, ballsy bravado, she’s not sufficiently fleshed out. The absent counterbalance to all her spit and vinegar until the final few seconds of the film is simply too late for any believable emotional rescue to occur. At least Cabiria (played by Giulietta Masina) shed that classic final tear after showing us her great range from being brassy and audacious to a sad clown. In contrast, Ani presents herself as being little more than an unsympathetic, even if temporarily foiled, predator.
On a significantly more positive note, over the years, Baker and his collaborators have blessed us with stunning color palettes. How about those vivid, but often menacing, skies that hover above the tawdry LA strip in “Tangerine” (2015) or the purple hotel in “The Florida Project” (2017) that seems to achieve a persona of its very own? Who can also forget that special moment in “The Florida Project” when the two kids gaze up at the wondrous rainbow? As we now fast-forward to “Anora,” Baker’s Coney Island boardwalk stroll as nightfall approaches, by our wandering group of four, is likewise seductively elegant. There’s a ditto for the imposing Day-Glo white of the aforementioned mansion-fortress, and the garish red interiors of the Brighton Beach night spots do remind us of Martin Scorsese’s Little Italy counterparts.
Perhaps it’s grossly unfair to expect “Anora” to measure up to “Mean Streets,” whereby overhyped expectations can be potentially toxic. In other words, how can one begin to enjoy anything if it is only compared to a gold standard? As a result, we should try to appreciate writers/directors on where they are, rather than on where we believe they should be. However, with “Anora,” the arc of Baker’s evolution appears to be regressive vs. progressive. At least in “The Florida Project” about raising kids in a decaying Orlando-area hotel, there was an ample injection of heart, and also enough of a budget to cast the eternally masterful Willem Dafoe as the hybrid hotel manager/spiritual surrogate dad.
Despite such scattered foci of richness, with such evident skills behind the camera, can we offer Baker any parting advice on what might be the core source of my overall disappointment with “Anora”? If one can kindly pardon my tepid reference to a contemporary 2024 holiday season biopic … the answer, my friend, is blowin’ up the script.
