The slapstick sting of 'Anora'
Sean Baker's latest film, which recently played Fantastic Fest, is a golden age comedy for a pyrite world
I am going to hire a medium to channel classic Hollywood director Preston Sturges. For you see, he is very dead, but he needs to watch “Anora.”
Sturges did not immediately come to mind as a would-be fan of filmmaker Sean Baker. Then I watched “Anora” on Sept. 20 at Fantastic Fest. As mentioned in the pre-screening intro, Baker is a fan of Hollywood’s golden age. “Anora” — well, its second act — nails the beats of a screwball comedy classic.
But Baker is no imitator, and his 21st century adventures through life at the margins are never precious. In “Anora,” the director stress tests a madcap formula, and it cracks like a walnut.
(I’m going to be on my Turner Classic Movies shit this week, heads up.)
Mikey Madison (“Better Things,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) stars as the titular character, a brassy, take-no-guff New Yorker who goes by Ani. She’s an Uzbek-American who understands Russian (her grandma never learned English) but doesn’t speak it fluently. Ani gives men private dances in the back rooms of a nightclub, where she works the floor with the efficiency and talent of a Target shift leader.
The boss hands her to any Russophones who come in looking for strange, like Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn, aka Troye Sivan if he was bitten by a radioactive gamer). The hyperactive heir to a Russian oligarch, Ivan is dazzled by Ani. He books her services as an escort. A whirlwind fling leads to an impulsive — but mutually sincere, it seems — quickie marriage in Las Vegas.
Minor spoilers follow, if you want to go in fresh.
Wedded bliss doesn’t last longer than a montage. Ivan’s parents catch wind of the nuptials. They dispatch a trio of stateside proxies to clean up the mess. But Ivan makes a break for it, and as the abandoned Ani learns, this isn’t his first international incident. For Ivan, America is a theme park, and Ani might just be another ride.
What follows is a loony, night-long chase through NYC, as Ani and her captors pursue their wayward prince. Many folks have compared the film to “Uncut Gems,” an infamously anxious movie directed by the Safdie brothers. There’s an undeniable similarity to the shape of the two films. I reckon it’s too easy a comparison.
That’s why I’m thinking of Sturges. I mainlined a lot of old movies growing up. Sturges wrote and directed several classic screwball comedies; my faves are “The Palm Beach Story” and “The Lady Eve.” They’re fast-paced films full of get-rich-quick schemes, class clashes, and wily women who have legs up on the men.
The kinship to Baker’s work jumps out. He’s known for writing dazzlingly dimensional characters who make their living from sex work. Adjusted for carnal inflation, Simon Rex’s ne’er-do-well porn star hustler in “Red Rocket” and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez’s scorned but unstoppable sex worker in “Tangerine” remind me of the laugh-riot strivers populating those old flicks.
I also can’t help but think of Joel McCrea’s character in Sturges’ “Sullivan’s Travels.” He’s a high-minded, dissatisfied director of studio comedies who sets out to learn about the common man’s struggle. At the end, he realizes that people in this cold-ass world just want to laugh. Baker’s silly-side-of-seedy worlds put this lesson put into practice, sorta.
Ani remixes a few different Sturges dames. She’s trying to cross class lines at the altar, like Claudette Colbert in “The Palm Beach Story.” She’s a “fallen woman” who doesn’t fit into her lover’s world, like Barbara Stanwyck in “The Lady Eve.” She’s a hard-luck romantic entangled in a marriage license mess, like Betty Hutton in “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.”
Those came out in the 1940s; of course all the plots involved matrimony. Maybe these plots were edgy back then, but they still saw marriage as the women’s way to financial security and moral redemption.
“Anora” is sort of the “um, actually” to that idea. For starters: Even if the movie’s antagonists shame Ani for her line of work, the film never, ever does. The audience isn’t meant to pity her economic status, either.
If anything, privilege leads to poor character in “Anora.” Ivan doesn’t look up from his video game when household staff enters in the room, while Ani immediately makes eye contact and room for the vacuum cleaner. His friends are working class people whom he plays with like a kid doing a dolphin experience at SeaWorld. She cozily cuts up with her fellow exotic dancers in the dressing room. When she leaves to be a billionaire bride, even the club’s bouncer sheds a tear.
“For Ivan, America is a theme park, and Ani might just be another ride.”
But like a Sturges gal, Ani’s story is one of upward mobility. Baker stops short of completely inverting the trope. OK, her class and sexuality aren’t sources of shame, but neither is her desire for a fairytale ascension to a world of fur coats and fridges full of Voss water. Of course she wants a more comfortable life. Even if she’s marrying Ivan for the money — and she’s not entirely — why wouldn’t she? It wouldn’t make her a better person, but it would make her a safer one.
I love how Baker zigs in tone when an older film would zag. The first act of “Anora” floats on sex and spontaneity, and then second act is funny with its full chest. Madison is a marvel of physical comedy as the enforcers invade the couple’s mansion and try to restrain her. She meets their hired muscle with the feral combat skills of a true Brooklynite, like if “Home Alone” starred Fran Drescher.
And yet, you find yourself gut-checking some laughs. As the ragtag crew sets out in search of Ivan, it’s still a comedy, but the truth of the situation is ever on the periphery. Ani is being held under duress. Her life has been taken out of her hands. What’s happening is deeply fucked up.
As the film’s reality sneaks into the foreground, Baker uses light quite compellingly. Ani begins the story glowing in the pinks, purples, and blues of late-night desire. They hide what a person doesn’t want to see. Later, the searing white glare of a New York blizzard leaves Ani blown out — exposed. We learn that the main character’s given name, Anora, sometimes translates to “light,” which opens up all kinds of interpretations. (That’s your homework.)
I wouldn’t dream of spoiling the end of “Anora,” but I’ll say this. If the first act is a Technicolor romance, and the second is a Barbara Stanwyck movie, the third is something newer and angrier.
Baker’s modern understanding of class, capitalism, and gender complicates the kind of cinematic adventure he obviously loves. An upward hop across social dividing lines is transgressive. You can amuse the wealthy and powerful, but they’ll never let you stay. Likewise, climbing off the ivory tower to experience how real folks live isn’t the enlightening caper of “Sullivan’s Travels.” As the callous Ivan demonstrates, it’s “Westworld.”
In “Anora,” all the slapstick comes with a sting.
One rad thing
Well, technically two rad things, but experienced in unison. Recently, my friend Austin and I went to see Gregg Araki’s “Nowhere” at Hyperreal Film Club’s new theater. Seek out both as soon as God lets you, if you haven’t already.
I’ve sought out Araki’s stuff since college (before I even came out to myself), when I first rented “Kaboom” (which sped that process along). After seeing “The Doom Generation” and “Totally Fucked Up,” 1997’s “Nowhere” was my final part of the filmmaker’s “Teen Apocalypse” trilogy to see.
I’m glad, because this movie is the sum of Araki’s whole deal. It’s got roaming teen nihilists, James Duval in unfulfilled gay heat, lizard aliens, the end of a world that maybe already ended, winks to the pop culture of yesterday, and so much more.
Araki chews up all of the above and metabolizes it into an aesthetic that’s purely his. Every frame is a colorful, cheeky scream. If you want to talk about gaze (or gays), I’ve always appreciated his eye for hunks and how he films them. A lot of masculine musculoskeletal architecture streaked in shadow.
It’s easy to think of Araki’s work as mean-spirited, but I think it’s better described as confrontational, in a way that characterizes a lot of queer cinema of the era. (The early 1990s? Hostile to gays? This is all coming as news to me …) I love how “Nowhere,” in particular, values sweetness and never mocks the characters who have it, even if the world punishes them for it.
So much to love in this film. I love the parade of young Hollywood faces. I love Nathan Bexton’s jaw. I love Charlotte Rae yelling “Death!” If I ever meet a man who sees me the way Araki sees James Duval, it’s wedding bells, deadass. You can stream “Nowhere” on the Criterion Channel app or rent it elsewhere.
And as for Hyperreal’s new screening space: what a treat. When I profiled the founders in 2022 for the Statesman, they hoped to open a physical home in the future. Not only is it always good to have more cinema options in Austin, but it’s heartening to see these DIY heroes fulfill their creative dreams.
Outbound messages
If I could write like any other writer, it would be Hanif Abdurraqib. Hell, if I could speak like any other person with vocal cords, it would be him. When I find a new interview with the author of “They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” it’s an early birthday present. (Unless it happens on March 16, which has not happened yet.)
What a lovely occasion, then, to see that Abdurraqib guested on a new podcast I’ve been trying out, NPR’s “Wild Card.” When host Rachel Martin asked about the Columbus, Ohio, native’s relationship to his hometown, he gave a fascinating answer about a period he spent unhoused.
I really sat up in my seat as he continued:
“So Columbus, for example, is now trying to market itself as like a tech city or food city — all these things that don't actually serve the population that is living and breathing and actively there. But to be among that population and to be among a version of that population, in my case, where I was extremely at a margin, meant that I got to see the city's most honest face behind all of its false masks.
“I got to see that and say, ‘You know what? I actually think I still love it. I still love it. I love the city as its most honest self because I know what that most honest self is and I can cut to the heart of it.’ I don't want to have to learn that about any other place. And I don't have the time or energy to learn how to love a place at its most honest, which I require. I require that.”
Whoops, that made me think about Austin, my hometown. Listen to the whole episode or read a written version here.
…
As a former child game show winner, I’ve had fun sending a new Slate story about a “Jeopardy!” contestant’s bad behavior to friends and saying it’s about me. Luke Winkie’s piece about an (adult) champion/trivia circuit menace who’s Definitely Having a Normal One contains several jewels, including the subject calling himself “a subject of quiz-apartheid.” Read it here.