After Los Angeles(Tangerine), Florida(The Florida Project) and Texas(Red Rocket), Sean Baker continues to chart his course in the USA in his new film, Anora, which left the Cannes Film Festival crowned with the prestigious Palme d'Or. Back in New York (after Prince of Broadway), this time the American filmmaker sets his camera in the Russian neighborhood of Brighton Beach, where Anora(or Ani, as he prefers) lives(Mikey Madison, seen in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood and Scream).
A trainer in a hostess bar, Ani is also an escort in her spare time. On a night like any other - the men act like men, the nude dancers chat up the customers, using their charms to rack up the greenbacks - the young woman with the sculptural beauty meets a young Russian, Ivan(Mark Eydelshteyn).
This immature youngster, fresh from his mother's skirts, tells her he's the son of a Russian oligarch. A godsend for Ani, who dreams of being a class defector, imagining leaving behind her miserable life of wandering hands and dawn subway rides. While the story is reminiscent of Pretty Woman in broad strokes, Sean Baker is in fact more reminiscent of James Gray and his Little Odessa.
Through expressive editing and a fast-paced alternation of sketches, the New York director reveals the intimacy of ultra-rich youth as we suspect it to be, in a light but agitated first half. Taking advantage of being away from their parents (Ivan's parents are in Russia, while he lives alone in his family's huge mansion), the two lovebirds jet off to Las Vegas, on a whim, because it's rumored that the drugs are better there.
If the pace is galloping, so is this story of express love, leading them straight to the altar. But soon Ivan's parents find out and ask for help from the Russian community in New York. This leads to one of the film's funniest scenes, when the Armenian priest Toros(Karren Karagulian) is commissioned by the family to force the two young people to call off the wedding.
As a true orthodox censor, he is accompanied by Igor(Yuriy Borisov) and Garnick(Vache Tovmasyan), two ice-cabinet-like Pieds Nickelés, who soon find themselves at a loss when faced with Ani, who swears like a carter and struggles like a lioness. For Sean Baker never falls into the cliché of the bloodthirsty Russians of Shadow Promises. While the community chosen for Anora might suggest a dramatic film with Mafia overtones, it turns out to be a hilarious comedy-drama at times, with some finely-wrought lines.
Breathtakingly magnetic, Mikey Madison's character is as feminine as he is feminist, as powerful as he is cracked. A powerful portrait for a modern Palme d'Or, with a lively mise-en-scène that captures the frenzy of New York's nightlife and youth. To be seen in cinemas on October 30, 2024.
