Toronto 2024 Review: ANORA, This Palme D'Or Winner Is a Banger

The experience of watching Anora is akin to a spontaneous and unexpected invite to a epic house-wrecking party. It starts off with surprise and wonder, plunges into drunken euphoria, loses all your friends, projectile vomits on you in a car ride around town, lands you in court after dawn, and eventually, a stranger dumps you, broken, at your doorstep. Maybe the experience leaves a silver-lining, where you learn to never do that again.

These are not plot spoilers. They are the inevitabilities of maturing into an adult human. Not all of us make it through the ringer.

 

Sean Baker’s Palme D’Or winner at one point name-checks Cinderella. Its visual language and layered bedlam evoke a re-envisioning of Pretty Woman (or perhaps more interestingly the 0.01% of Eyes Wide Shut) by the Safdie Brothers. If Good Time and Uncut Gems were heart-clutching, cinematic panic attacks, Anora is in fine company, and a real banger. 



 

Not beating around the bush, Ani is introduced hustling as an exotic dancer at Head Quarters, a NYC strip club. She lands Thomas, a very young, very wealthy client (or in the film’s parlance, “A hard dick with lots of cash”) because she speaks a bit of Russian. The man-child scion of a Russian Oligarch, Thomas soon brings Ani into his hard partying, quick fucking, big spending orbit, that culminates in a Vegas bacchanal, and an on-the-strip marriage. (As one does). 



 

When the family, back home, find out about the nuptials (and impending shame of said nuptials) it sets off a fire storm of consequences that Baker piles on top of one another in an escalation par excellence. The joy of the wedding, and all the material things that are coming to Ani via her new husband, unravel in short order as a fixers are sic’d on the newlyweds by Thomas’s rich parents anxious for a quick annulment.

 

Thomas goes from overconfident goofball to scared shitless in a heartbeat. Instantly sobering, he knows what kind of trouble he is in. He promptly exits, leaving a freshly abandoned Ani, who is woefully unprepared for the instant collapse of any and all sugar-baby, sparkle sparkle fantasies. The sharp clash of violence (not to mention culture and ego)  consumes her every waking moment for the next 48 hours.



 

Making short work of American and Russian mores and values, Baker delights in the conflict at every opportunity. The lead Armenian fixer, Toros, is an Orthodox priest forced to exit mid-christening in the church to deal with the issue.

 

You will rapidly forget that he is high ranking clergy by his language, demeanour, and behaviour for the rest of the runtime, and its one of the film's best jokes. He and his pair of gopnik goons, are woefully unprepared for the physical and mental resistance put up by Ani. She weighs less than 90 pounds soaking wet, but is a real scrapper. 



 

Mikey Madison as Ani is a force of nature and self-sufficiency. Her performance runs the gamut through the movie, with a resourceful and evolving character. While few are able to match the will of Russian billions (not even international sanctions, apparently), watching Ani scrap, scream, plead, deal, and eventually, somewhat unwillingly, join forces is a marvel to behold.

 

Observe how Ani goes from tied up in the back seat to riding shotgun in Toro’s Cadillac SUV as a breakneck quest to find Thomas proceeds across several boroughs (from Coney Island to Manhattan) with the ominous countdown of Thomas’ parents flying in from Moscow ever present in the background.
Even if she is never a fully likeable character, it is easy to admire her trashy brand of pluck.

 

The concept of Russian bribery, Blat (favours of influence) and naked use of force, compared to American privilege, excessive litigation, and the various uses of a baseball bat, provides much grist for the mill, even as the film (and some truly magnificent set-pieces) barely stop long enough for anyone to think. Baker assails each culture with equal vigour, everyone shouting over one another, in barely controlled chaos. This makes a surprisingly good political allegory, not that this is ever the film's intent.

The reason for its wild, entertaining, success is more in watching the personal growth of Ani to the more fulsome Anora. Her petulance and loud pursuit of creature comforts, and personal entitlement gradually evolve into self awareness and confidence. She accumulates battle scars, draws new red-lines, fails, regroups from her failures, and well, grows. 


 

Oddly, Tomas, the perpetual spoiled child, has a piece of unaware insight to offer Ani at the exact moment of his own dread: “I don’t know where we are going. But we are going!” Cliche as it is, it is also truth: all parties (even the bangers) must end. Life is the journey, not the destination. The trick is not to die along the way.