Believe the hype: Anora is a hysterical comedy that also shatters your heart

For Americans under the age of 40 in 2024, there is no “American dream”. There is just American survival. The younger you are in this country, the greater the financial turmoil you must endure just to breathe from one day to the next. Gen Z and younger folks may never be able to afford to buy a home, for instance. That feat used to be a common rite of passage for folks in their late 20s/early 30s. God knows I can personally attest to the nightmare of being young in American capitalism. Ever since getting laid off from a freelance job in late February, I’ve spent the last eight months scrambling to make ends meet and not lose my apartment. Rare is the night I do not place my head on a pillow and begin to wonder “Will I be homeless in a month?”. Equally scarce are weeks when I don’t have to go a little hungry just to make that most recent grocery trip last longer.

I’ve had it tough. I also know plenty of other people my age and younger that have it even worse. We all have the talent, ambition, and dreams prior generations had. But we no longer have an economy, job market, or landscape to turn these goals into reality. Instead, we’re stuck just trying to make this month’s rent or health insurance payments. Consistent employment is a fairy tale. Our lives (likely diminished in length by the class we were born to) are dedicated to just surviving. As the gap between the rich and the poor grows even greater, this American reality grows ever starker.

Existing in these conditions, where student loan debts dictate your life’s direction more than anything else, often reminds me of these lines from the Oneohtrix Point Never song "The Pure and the Damned”:

Every day I think about untwisting and untangling these strings I'm in
And to lead a pure life
I look ahead at a clear sky
Ain't gonna get there
But it's a nice dream, it's a nice dream

Anora "Ani" Mikheeva (Mikey Madison) knows a thing or two about "nice dreams" being elusive. Anora's protagonist works as a dancer at the Brighton Beach strip club Headquarters. It’s a gig that gets her some moolah and she’s incredibly skilled in her profession. However, toiling away at Headquarters doesn’t pay nearly enough to escape her crummy life living paycheck-to-paycheck with a roommate. Then one night, in strolls a Russian 21-year-old named Ivan "Vanya" Zakharaov (Mark Eydelshteyn). Armed with a vape pen and a glint of excitement in his eyes, he's initially paired with Ani simply because she’s the only employee here who speaks Russian.

However, the two quickly become enamored with each other. Vanya, who comes from a super wealthy family (just look at the sprawling mansion he calls home!) even pays Ani for future sexual encounters. This agreement eventually evolves to her posing as his girlfriend for a week. It’s a purely financial transaction initially, but the two begin to grow closer to each other. On a Las Vegas trip, they even decide to go for it and embrace the oldest cliché in the book…a quickie Vegas marriage. It looks like everything’s coming up Milhouse for Ani now that she’s in love and financial security. However, Vanya’s parents despise on marrying a sex worker.  The duo quickly sends minions like Toros (Karren Karagulian) and Igor (Yura Borisov) to annul the situation. If they think Ani is giving up everything she's procured without a fight, though, they have another thing coming.

Writer/director Sean Baker has spent 24 years making movies unflinchingly examining the working-class lives Hollywood typically leaves off-camera. In the process, he's (among other artistic feats) consistently painted morally complicated portraits of souls who normally have to be “model citizens” to earn sympathy in America. This country's contempt for the poor (just look at the ubiquity of the phrase “welfare queen”) means cash-strapped individuals in movies must act like saints to be “likable”. Baker’s works delightfully say “screw that”. Tangerine’s protagonists can knock food out of people’s hands. Starlet’s leads build a relationship out of selfish lies. Prince of Broadway’s main character briefly abandons a baby in a restaurant.

These actions crystallize the fully nuanced human beings Baker is enamored with. They also subtly reinforce that working-class people don’t need to be “perfect” to earn your dramatic investment. That phenomenon continues with finesse in Anora. Men who recoil at women saying brash words, cover your eyes and ears. Ani is the foul-mouthed and sexually active hero moviegoers need but don’t deserve. There’s so much that’s incredibly compelling about this character. What especially astonished me, though, was how Ani works in a conceptually paradoxical fashion.

On the one hand, Ani is someone who embodies our aspirations. Just gaze at her confident IDGAF attitude delivering lines like “jealousy is a disease, babe” or her no-BS candor grappling with powerful men like Toros and Igor. These guys reside in a higher social class than Ani. That doesn’t stop her from constantly spewing profanity and threats in their direction. Who wouldn’t want that chutzpah? Equally engrossing is a scene of her and Vanya joyfully celebrating their marriage in Vegas, with the camera swooping around and the Robin Schulz remake of Take That’s “Greatest Day” pounding on the soundtrack. This whole scene is just sweeping emotionally, a dream of romantic elation made physical. Everyone yearns for this sense of joy and love.

Simultaneously, Ani is also a character that perfectly portrays working-class vulnerabilities. Moments where we just see Ani silently grapple with her economic powerlessness make your heartache. There’s a recognition of capitalism’s inescapability in her pupils that I often see when I gaze into the mirror. Such displays of susceptibility hit extra hard after Ani’s previously been somebody we live vicariously through. Nobody escapes the whims of the rich, not even characters fleetingly embodying idealized scenarios. Within Ani, I witnessed a vision of who I wanted to be and a reassuring reflection that I’m not the only one suffocating within America’s rigid financial confines. Baker’s writing and Madison’s performance, both superbly crafted, realize both of those qualities

Speaking of disparate elements working like gangbusters, the often-devastating Anora is also incredible as a comedy. Baker’s prior features have frequently featured laughs, particularly in Red Rocket’s dark comedy. He’s never been as sharp in his visual wit, though, as he is with Anora. Once Toros and his goons enter the story, the feature picks up a slightly wackier sensibility. The emphasis on physical comedy, not to mention challenges to gender and class roles, happily echoes director Ernst Lubitsch. Howard Hawks and Sam Woods. R.I.P. to those legends. You also would’ve been tittering away at Borisov's subdued displays of Igor's increasing exhaustion at dealing with Ani.

Some of the best jokes here come from visual gags made possible through Baker (who also edits Anora) and cinematographer Drew Daniels showing a love for wider framing. If you’re going into cardiac arrest over stale modern comedies leaning on cramped shots and lifeless lighting, Anora is a shot of adrenaline right into your heart. Case in point: there’s a great comedic beat where Ani and Toros are arguing on the left side of a wide frame. On the other side, Igor is silently fiddling with a metal bat. I couldn’t believe I was the only one in my theater laughing at this joke excelling through this image’s spaciousness and length. All kinds of similarly great meticulously staged visual gags constantly tickle one’s funny bone throughout Anora.

Just as the best Anora jokes thrive on tiny details, so too are some of the movie’s most affecting emotional beats executed in a subdued fashion. My favorite is how Ani’s healthiest relationship with anyone is her friendship with fellow stripper Lulu (Luna Sofía Miranda). The two attend one of Vanya’s parties together on New Year’s Eve and the entire time they’re shown as being joined at the hip. When the ball drops, they’re holding hands. Before they enter the party, they check on each other's outfits (“do my tits look alright?”). They’re always tight-knit within this unfamiliar environment. Lizzie Borden’s Working Girls would beam with pride over such a quietly moving display of women sex workers sticking together!

Lulu is one of many supporting Anora characters that’s just so fun to watch on-screen. Everyone in this movie feels richly lived in. They’re riddled with subtle details suggesting layered existences beyond Ani’s current plight. One of the most enjoyable of these figures is Diamond (Lindsey Normington). She's a deliciously wicked stripper who functions as Ani's Headquarters rival. Normington imbues Diamond with such delightfully maximalist line deliveries and an unabashedly adversarial air. There’s something so refreshing about a modern film character who’s just a straight-up asshole. Normington executes the role with unforgettable style to spare.

These delightful side characters and Anora’s many hysterical gags make this, at times, the first Sean Baker crowd-pleaser. However, as Ani’s life spins further and further out of control, the movie’s emotional gut punches grow increasingly severe. There’s so much palpable heartbreak in Madison’s depiction of Ani clinging to hope that she and Vanya can stay together. In another actor’s hands, this gum-chewing woman with a thick Brooklyn accent could’ve become a caricature. Madison, meanwhile, effortlessly turns Ani into a captivating figure. She puts her whole heart and soul into every inch of Ani’s story. Whether it's executing messy screaming dialogue when she confronts Toros and company or any instance of physical-oriented acting, Madison is mesmerizingly assured. Her dedication to this uniquely rendered character immediately captivated me. Madison’s gift for lending tangible weight to Ani’s greatest setbacks, meanwhile, ensured my attention wasn’t going anywhere.

Walking out of Anora, I found myself shocked at how much this movie messed me up. I strolled out of Saw X and Terrifier 2 without missing a beat or having subsequent nightmares. Anora, though, was different. Above all else, Baker’s latest movie explores how capitalism is so suffocating that we’re all scrambling for some fleeting human connection to make it all tolerable. There is no permanent stability or joy within a world containing such tremendous gulfs between the haves and have-nots.

Baker previously used the ending of The Florida Project to suggest true bliss is only possible in grand dream sequences. Here, there isn’t even a fantasy visit to Walt Disney World to make this truth go down smoother. Anora is unflinching in depicting how elusive happiness is for working-class souls even before everything with Vanya goes to Hell. Before some goons working for Vanya’s dad threaten Ani, this Russian twink is already doing things like playing video games when Ani wants to cuddle or berating a Vegas hotel manager. The warning signs are there. But, as a wise owl once said, “When you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.”

Anora’s an incredible movie. I’d need to stew on it more before deciding if it’s Baker’s best work (it’ll always be hard to topple Tangerine in my book). However, it’s certainly one of his greatest accomplishments in an astounding career. More than that, though, it’s a movie that left me shaken at seeing modern American economic disparity so vividly rendered on the big screen. Anora delivers tremendous belly laughs. It also (largely through Madison’s instantly iconic performance) heartbreakingly depicts how happiness for modern young people is often a mirage. We are all searching for “a clear sky” to make life tolerable. It’s impossible to reach that “sky” given the iron grip Anora’s villains like the bourgeoisie, older people, and socially accepted dehumanizing attitudes towards marginalized folks (like sex workers) have on society. But hey, finding some stability in all this chaos…it’s a nice dream. It’s a nice dream.