Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier this year, this latest from Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Red Rocket) sees him taking his act up north to New York and Brooklyn and offering an entertaining twist on an established movie trope. Anora keeps us riveted to our seats and drawn into the narrative. 

Suppose Pretty Woman’s premise had ‘rich man turns to woman for hire, and the two fall in love’ as its fairy tale premise. In that case, Anora takes that same basic storyline but strips the fairy tale elements and removes the rose-tinted glasses to give us something more raunchy and street-real. And we love Baker for doing this with humor, action, and a sassy attitude. 

Mikey Madison as Anora is a revelation. Despite all her faults and vices, she never overplays the portrayal, turning the exotic dancer into someone we sympathize with. She carries the film in a steely manner that astonishes - when we look back at the film’s progress from encounter to hurried marriage, betrayal, and retribution and resolution. Supported by a strong cast of Russians and Armenians in American characters, the film is both a fractured love story and a Social Anthropology essay on Russian Americans and how they’re so tied to the motherland and remain a close-knit community.

Mark Eidelstein is Ivan Zakharov, the son of the Russian oligarch. He’s a Russian actor known in his homeland as the Russian Timothee Chalamet, and there is a broad resemblance with their lean stature and unruly mop of curly hair. He’s convincing in his role as Ivan, ready to make full use of his parent’s money in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures but utterly cowed by them when they’re physically present. 

What elevates the film and its subject matter from being some B-film retread of Pretty Woman is the dynamics of the actors and how Baker’s screenplay knows how to surprise and take us down roads we didn’t know existed, and we can enjoy fully. Look for Anora during the QCinema original hope it returns in regular theaters. 

It’s sexy, it’s disturbing, it’s laugh-out-loud funny, and it’s poignant. There are not many films around that can claim to take us successfully through so many moods and emotions.