Sean Baker’s ‘Anora’ is a Seductive Forbidden Love Story

metroweekly.com:

Anora is also remarkably naïve, even for a stripper with a heart of gold. Played by Scream (2022) standout Mikey Madison, Anora, or Ani to friends and customers, honestly has no idea what she’s getting herself into when she accepts an offer from one especially enthusiastic customer to be his “horny girlfriend” for the week.Loaded, in every sense of the word, 21-year-old Russian heir Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Russian newcomer Mark Eydelshteyn) takes such a liking to Ani that he whisks her from the strip club to his mansion overlooking Brooklyn’s Jamaica Bay to a penthouse suite in Vegas.Blasting bong hits and vodka shots, they party with his friends, ball like billionaires, have raucous sex all over the place, and fully submit to their Pretty Woman fantasy.But, in fluidly shot, snappily edited scenes of the ladies at work at the club, Baker’s already shown how smoothly Ani can hustle the floor.

She’s a clever woman, and even if she’s more accustomed to the lapdance lounge and her shared apartment next to the elevated subway tracks than luxury suites in Vegas, she presumably should expect that there will be a catch.She might not, but Baker understands the audience will be waiting for some kind of axe to fall, especially after Vanya drops a “Do you know who my father is?” on Ani.

Not unlike the filmmaker’s previous serio-comic character studies Red Rocket, The Florida Project, and Tangerine, Anora toys with audience expectations of just how badly things might go for the deluded hustler protagonist who can only see the finish line.Madison pulls off Ani’s contradictory qualities of shrewdness and guilelessness, plus adds a stiff New Yawk accent and loads of forthright sensuality.