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Anora (film)

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Anora is a 2024 American romantic comedy-drama film written, directed and edited by Sean Baker. It stars Mikey Madison as the stripper Anora Mikheeva, and follows her beleaguered romance with the son of a Russian oligarch. It also stars Mark Eidelstein, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, and Aleksei Serebryakov.

Anora
Theatrical release poster
Directed bySean Baker
Written bySean Baker
Produced by
  • Alex Coco
  • Samantha Quan
  • Sean Baker
Starring
CinematographyDrew Daniels
Edited bySean Baker
Music byMatthew Hearon-Smith
Production
companies
Distributed byNeon
Release dates
  • May 21, 2024 (2024-05-21) (Cannes)
  • October 18, 2024 (2024-10-18) (United States)
Running time
139 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
Languages
  • English
  • Russian[2]
  • Armenian
Box office$540,000[3]

Anora premiered on May 21, 2024, in competition at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or, the first American film to do so since The Tree of Life in 2011. It was released theatrically on October 18, 2024, by Neon. It received acclaim for Madison's performance and Baker's direction, screenplay, and editing.

Plot

Anora "Ani" Mikheeva is a young stripper living in Brighton Beach, a Russian-speaking neighborhood in Brooklyn. Although she is shallow and materialistic, she is unhappy with her life and looking for a way out. As she is the only stripper in her upscale Manhattan strip club who speaks Russian, her boss introduces her to Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov, the dissolute and immature son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. Vanya is ostensibly in the U.S. to study, but spends most of his time partying and playing video games in his family's Brooklyn mansion while his parents work in Russia. His parents pay three ethnic Armenian handlers, Toros, Garnick, and Igor, to keep an eye on him, but they cannot control him and settle for cleaning up his messes.

Although Ani does not see herself as a prostitute, Vanya hires her for several sexual encounters. He grows attached to her and pays her $15,000 to stay with him for a week, triggering a whirlwind romance. Vanya and his entourage fly to Las Vegas, where Vanya asks Ani to marry him. Although Ani is initially skeptical, Vanya insists his love is genuine, and they elope in a small Vegas wedding chapel. After the wedding, Vanya offhandedly mentions that he hopes to use Ani to obtain a green card so that he will not have to go home to Russia and work for his father. Ani quits her job and tries to be a devoted wife, but Vanya remains as thoughtless as ever.

News of the wedding spreads on Russian social media, to the fury of Vanya's domineering mother Galina and inattentive father Nikolai. They immediately fly to America to confront their son. In the meantime, Galina orders Toros to find the couple and prepare an annulment.

Toros sends Garnick and Igor to confront Ani and Vanya at the mansion. They inform Vanya that his parents will take him back to Russia and enrage Ani by calling her a prostitute. Vanya runs away, leaving Ani to deal with the fallout. Ani fights Garnick and Igor, destroying much of Vanya's living room in the process; however, they eventually subdue her. When Toros arrives, he lectures Ani about Vanya's immaturity and explains that Vanya has no personal assets to split in a divorce. He offers her $10,000 to accept an annulment. Ani insists that she and Vanya are in love, but reluctantly agrees to help Toros find Vanya as long as she gets a chance to speak to Vanya first. Toros takes Ani's wedding ring.

Ani, Toros, Garnick, and Igor spend most of the night driving around Brooklyn looking for Vanya. To Ani's fury, she finds out that Vanya is receiving a lap dance from a rival stripper at her old workplace. Ani attempts to reason with Vanya, but he is too intoxicated to listen. In the morning, a New York judge explains that he cannot annul a Nevada wedding. Galina, who has just landed in New York with Nikolai, orders the entire group to fly to Las Vegas.

Ani attempts to introduce herself to Vanya's parents, but Galina is unmoved and openly contemptuous of Ani. Vanya immediately accepts the situation, coldly telling Ani that the marriage is impossible. Ani threatens to force Vanya through lengthy divorce proceedings, but Galina promises to destroy her life if she does so. Ani curses out Vanya but gives in and signs the annulment papers. She scolds Galina for being such a bad mother that Vanya married a stripper to annoy her. Nikolai bursts out in laughter, acknowledging the truth of Ani's comments. After the papers are signed, Igor suggests that Vanya apologize to Ani, but Galina insists that her son will not apologize to anyone, implying that no lessons will be learned from the incident.

Igor takes Ani back to New York to pack up her belongings. They spend a final night bonding over their fate together. In the morning, Igor gives Ani the money Toros promised her and drives her home. Before dropping her off, he returns Ani's wedding ring as a token of goodwill. She responds by initiating sex with him, but changes her mind when he tries to kiss her. She breaks down crying in his arms.

Cast

Production

Principal photography took place at the beginning of 2023 in Brooklyn, New York.[5]

For Anora, Baker has stated that his intentions were towards "telling human stories, by telling stories that are hopefully universal [...] It's helping remove the stigma that's been applied to [sex work], that's always been applied to this livelihood."[6] Baker created the titular character and chose to cast Mikey Madison after seeing her performances in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Scream.[7]

At a press conference in Cannes, Madison stated that Baker and producer Samantha Quan, who is Baker's wife, would act out different sex positions to demonstrate what they wanted the actors to do. Madison was offered an intimacy coordinator, but said: "As I'd already created a really comfortable relationship with both of them for about a year, I felt that that would be where I was most comfortable with and it ended up working so perfectly."[6]

Andrea Werhun, a Canadian writer and actress best known for her 2018 memoir Modern Whore about her prior time as a sex worker, served as a creative consultant on the film.[8]

Release

 
Yura Borisov, Sean Baker, Mikey Madison, Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan at TIFF 2024

Worldwide distribution rights were acquired by FilmNation Entertainment in October 2023. The film was then sold by FilmNation to Le Pacte for France, Lev for Israel, Kismet for Australia and New Zealand, and Focus Features/Universal Pictures International for the rest of the world excluding North America in deals similar to those made on Baker's previous film, Red Rocket.[5] In November 2023, Neon acquired North American distribution rights to the film,[9] and opened it in limited release on October 18, 2024.[10][11]

Anora premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2024,[12][13] and won the festival's Palme d'Or on May 25.[14] It earned a 10-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening.[15] It became the fifth consecutive Palme d'Or winner distributed by Neon in the United States, following Parasite, Titane, Triangle of Sadness, and Anatomy of a Fall; all except Titane went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Parasite winning.[16] It is also the first American-produced film to win the Palme d'Or since 2011's The Tree of Life.[17]

The film also played at the Toronto International Film Festival,[18] the New York Film Festival,[19] the San Sebastián International Film Festival,[20] and has been selected by the Busan International Film Festival,[21] the BFI London Film Festival,[22] the 19th Rome Film Festival[23] and several others. It has been selected as the closing film for the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2024.[24]

Reception

Box office

In the United States, the film made an estimated $630,000 in its opening weekend from six theaters in Los Angeles and New York; its per-screen-average of $105,000 was the best of 2024, topping Kinds of Kindness ($75,000 average), and the second-best since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic after Asteroid City ($142,000 average).[25]

Critical response

 
Mikey Madison's performance as the title character received widespread praise.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 130 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.0/10. The website's consensus reads: "Another marvelous chronicle of America's strivers by writer-director Sean Baker given some extra pizzazz by Mikey Madison's brassy performance, Anora is a romantic drama on the bleeding edge."[26] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 93 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[27]

Greta Gerwig, serving as the president of the 77th Cannes Film Festival Jury, commented that "[Anora] was something we collectively felt we were transported by, we were moved by [...] It felt both new and in conversation with older forms of cinema. There was something about it that reminded us of [the] classic structures of Lubitsch or Howard Hawks, and then it did something completely truthful and unexpected."[28]

Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair wrote: "[Anora is] a wild, profane blast [...] Even when Baker's storytelling and dialogue gets repetitive, Madison keeps things lively [...] I found myself torn between finding Baker's conclusions compassionate and sensing a vague whiff of something patronizing. [...] Baker's explorations of outsiders tend to tread between graciousness and gawking, benevolent anthropology and the more malevolent, missionary kind."[29]

Justin Chang of The New Yorker wrote: "Anora plays like a wild dream—first joyous, then catastrophic, and always fiercely unpredictable [...] A contemporary return to screwball tradition is a welcome but challenging proposition, and Baker’s play with the form is hardly seamless. [Anora] built up a righteous steam of fury, now unleashes it against the Ivans of the world and salutes those toiling thanklessly in their employ."[7]

Accolades

Award Date of ceremony Category Recipient(s) Result Ref.
Cannes Film Festival May 25, 2024 Palme d'Or Sean Baker Won [30]
Miskolc International Film Festival September 14, 2024 Emeric Pressburger Prize Anora Nominated [31]
Toronto International Film Festival September 15, 2024 People's Choice Award 2nd Runner-up [32]
Savannah Film Festival November 2, 2024 Breakthrough Award Mikey Madison Won [33]

References

  1. ^ "Anora (18)". British Board of Film Classification. September 9, 2024. Archived from the original on September 21, 2024. Retrieved September 12, 2024.
  2. ^ "62nd New York Film Festival Main Slate Announced". Film at Lincoln Center. August 6, 2024. Archived from the original on September 21, 2024. Retrieved August 8, 2024.
  3. ^ "Anora (2024)". The Numbers. Nash Information Services. Retrieved October 20, 2024.
  4. ^ Canfield, David (May 23, 2024). "The "Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity" of Cannes Darling Anora". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on September 21, 2024. Retrieved May 23, 2024.
  5. ^ a b Lang, Brent (October 25, 2023). "'Red Rocket' Director Sean Baker and FilmNation Entertainment Reteam on 'Anora' With Mikey Madison Starring (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Archived from the original on September 21, 2024. Retrieved October 25, 2023.
  6. ^ a b Ritman, Alex; Shafer, Ellise (May 22, 2024). "Sean Baker Makes Movies About Sex Workers in Hopes of 'Helping Remove the Stigma' — and He's 'Already Talking About the Next One'". Variety. Archived from the original on September 21, 2024. Retrieved May 23, 2024.
  7. ^ a b Chang, Justin (October 11, 2024). ""Anora" Is a Strip-Club Cinderella Story—and a Farce to Be Reckoned With". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved October 14, 2024.
  8. ^ Vincent Perella, "Sean Baker Didn’t Pick Up on the Similarities Between ‘Anora’ and ‘Pretty Woman’ Until Halfway Through Production" Archived September 21, 2024, at the Wayback Machine. IndieWire, September 8, 2024.
  9. ^ Grobar, Matt (November 2, 2023). "Sean Baker Pic 'Anora' Acquired By Neon For North America". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on November 2, 2023. Retrieved November 2, 2023.
  10. ^ Lang, Brent (June 4, 2024). "Sean Baker's Palme d'Or Winner 'Anora' Scores Fall Release Date From Neon (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved June 4, 2024.
  11. ^ Grobar, Matt (July 15, 2024). "'Anora' Trailer: Mikey Madison's Stripper Falls For Son Of Russian Oligarch In Neon's Palme D'Or Winner From Sean Baker". Deadline. Archived from the original on July 26, 2024. Retrieved July 26, 2024.
  12. ^ "The Screenings Guide of the 77th Festival de Cannes". Festival de Cannes. May 8, 2024. Archived from the original on May 25, 2024. Retrieved May 8, 2024.
  13. ^ Ntim, Zac (April 11, 2024). "Cannes Film Festival Lineup Set: Competition Includes Coppola, Audiard, Cronenberg, Arnold, Lanthimos, Sorrentino & Abbasi's Trump Movie — Full List". Deadline. Archived from the original on May 10, 2024. Retrieved May 9, 2024.
  14. ^ Leffler, Rebecca (May 25, 2024). "Sean Baker's 'Anora' wins Palme d'Or at 2024 Cannes Film Festival". Screen International. Archived from the original on May 25, 2024. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  15. ^ Hipes, Patrick; Ntim, Zac (May 21, 2024). "Sean Baker's 'Anora' Gets 10-Minute Ovation In Cannes Film Festival World Premiere". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on May 21, 2024. Retrieved May 21, 2024.
  16. ^ Wiseman, Andreas (May 25, 2024). "Fantastic Five! Neon Makes It Five Palme d'Or Winners In A Row As 'Anora' Scoops Cannes Top Prize". Deadline. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  17. ^ Rothkopf, Joshua (May 25, 2024). "Sean Baker's 'Anora' wins Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 26, 2024.
  18. ^ "Anora". Toronto International Film Festival. Retrieved August 19, 2024.
  19. ^ "Anora". New York Film Festival. Retrieved August 22, 2024.
  20. ^ Ford, Lily (September 21, 2024). "Sean Baker Talks 'Anora' Success in San Sebastian: "I'm Not Looking for It to Get Me a Marvel Film"". The Hollywood Reporter.
  21. ^ "The 29th Busan International Film Festival: Selection List". Busan International Film Festival. September 3, 2024. Archived from the original on September 6, 2024. Retrieved September 6, 2024.
  22. ^ Tabbara, Mona. "BFI London Film Festival unveils full 2024 line-up". Screen. Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  23. ^ "Films of the 2024 Film Fest". Cinema Foundation for Rome. September 20, 2024. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
  24. ^ Staff, Scroll (October 9, 2024). "MAMI Mumbai Film Festival will open with Payal Kapadia's 'All We Imagine as Light'". Scroll.in. Retrieved October 11, 2024.
  25. ^ D'Alessandro, Anthony (October 19, 2024). "Smile 2 Happier With $23M Opening; A24's We Live In Time Making Dime With $4M+, Anora Wows With Massive $105K Theater Average – Saturday Box Office". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved October 19, 2024.
  26. ^ "Anora". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved October 20, 2024.  
  27. ^ "Anora". Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Retrieved October 19, 2024.
  28. ^ Sciences, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and. "Sean Baker's 'Anora' Wins Palme d'Or at 2024 Cannes Film Festival: See the Full Winners List". A.frame. Archived from the original on June 10, 2024. Retrieved June 10, 2024.
  29. ^ Lawson, Richard (May 21, 2024). "'Anora' Is a Raucous Good Time With a Gut-Punch of an Ending". Vanity Fair. Retrieved June 13, 2024.
  30. ^ Murray, Miranda (May 25, 2024). Merriman, Jane (ed.). "Exotic dancer drama 'Anora' wins Cannes Film Festival's top prize". Reuters. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  31. ^ "The 20th Anniversary Edition of CineFest Miskolc IFF Ready to Take Off". FilmNewEurope. August 31, 2024. Archived from the original on September 15, 2024. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  32. ^ Rebecca Rubin, "Tom Hiddleston’s ‘The Life of Chuck’ Wins Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award". Variety, September 15, 2024.
  33. ^ "AwardsWatch - 2024 SCAD Savannah Film Festival Honorees Include Steve McQueen, Karla Sofía Gascón and Sebastian Stan". AwardsWatch. September 26, 2024. Retrieved September 26, 2024.
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