Anora: This brilliant Pretty Woman-esque comedy deserves to win every prize at Cannes
Mikey Madison might have the best smile in the movies since Julia Roberts, but it works in more mysterious ways. In 1990’s Pretty Woman, Roberts’ grin was as uncomplicatedly gorgeous as sunshine punching through cloud. But in Sean Baker’s ripe and riotous Anora – a very modern Pretty Woman tale, which seems likely to make a star of its 25-year-old leading lady – Madison’s gnashers are harder to read.
Anora, or Ani (she prefers it), works at a strip club in Brooklyn, and is a black belt in parting men from their cash. With a disarming flash of her teeth, wallets simply flop open: it’s ruthless stuff, but she seems to take genuine pleasure in her work, or perhaps just how nakedly mercenary it allows her to be.
Then Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the puppyish 21-year-old son of a Russian oligarch, scampers in one night and promptly falls under her spell. It’s not initially clear whether Ani sees this cute-but-obnoxious free-spending princeling as a dream lover or an ideal mark, or where the distinction between the two even lies. But then a private jet to Las Vegas is boarded and a marriage certificate drunkenly obtained. Now, at last, it seems clear that Ani has found enduring happiness. Problem is, it endures all of 24 hours.
Baker’s dazzling eighth feature – which feels like an even bigger breakthrough hit-in-waiting than 2017’s The Florida Project – opens in raunchy comic romance mode. But as soon as Vanya’s furious family get word of the wedding, and insist the couple must be hauled to the nearest court to have the union annulled, it mutates into a sort of screwball panic thriller: Preston Sturges in the style of Uncut Gems.
In bowl a trio of goons to track down the now-absconded Vanya, and after persuading-slash-menacing Ani into helping – an outrageously funny centrepiece sequence, in which one, two, then three burly men try and fail to control this 5’3” force of nature – the foursome screech off in search of her husband, the world’s most exasperating needle now tucked away somewhere in a city-sized haystack.
Every character in Anora might be an utter nightmare, but they’re also a joy to spend time with, and the cast understand them down to their smallest behavioural tells. I loved Eydelshteyn’s metronomically brisk lovemaking technique, and his excited near-backflip onto the bed during his and Ani’s first (paid) assignation: in both sweet and horrifying ways, ‘kid at Christmas’ is the phrase that springs to mind.
Look up long-suffering in the dictionary, meanwhile, and you’ll find the despairing face of chief goon Toros (Baker regular Karren Karagulian), whose patience with his heedless young charge was obviously threadbare even before this latest upset. Yet nothing and no-one here can draw the spotlight from Madison, who delivers on all the promise of her (literally) blazing turn as one of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Manson cultists. Her Ani isn’t just as full of life as Roberts’s Vivian was in Pretty Woman: she’s grabbing success for herself as it hurtles past. Whether she can keep her grip is something Baker finally quietly invites us to ponder – a perfectly judged moment to reflect, and catch your breath.
Screening at the Cannes Film Festival. A UK release has yet to be announced
