Time: 139 Minutes
Age Rating: R16 – Sex scenes, nudity, drug use & offensive language
Cast:
Mikey Madison as Anora “Ani” Mikheeva
Mark Eydelshteyn as Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov
Yura Borisov as Igor
Karren Karagulian as Toros
Vache Tovmasyan as Garnik
Aleksei Serebryakov as Nikolai Zakharov
Director: Sean Baker

Anora was one of the films from 2024 that I had been meaning to catch up on, it has been receiving a lot of love and of course was getting some awards attention. I liked the two movies I’ve seen from writer/director Sean Baker (The Florida Project and Red Rocket) and I like Mikey Madison, so I was going into the movie open minded, but with managed expectations. I found Anora to be pretty good, even if I didn’t love it nearly as much as other people.

I found Anora to be entertaining, and while I had issues with the movie, I was still engaged with what was happening. The first act is an energetic romantic comedy and while I wouldn’t say I was loving it, I was definitely on board with it. The second act is more of a chaotic cat and mouse chase, very Safdie-esque with how it is aiming to be stressful and having people yelling at each other very loudly. While it can be enjoyable, it does get repetitive with the situations and scenarios. Here it particularly leans more into the comedy, and while Anora has funny scenes (some hits, some misses), I do think some of the humour deflated the eventual dramatic and emotional impact towards the end. The third act is where the actual heart and humanity really comes into the movie, but at that point there’s not much time left. The sudden snap to reality struggles to land with the intended impact, and while the ending is greatly directed and performed, it doesn’t feel earned. On one hand Anora feels like it’s trying to make a point about how sex workers are treated. However, I don’t think that the movie has a good enough foundation for all of that to really land, and it honestly worked better as a straight up screwball comedy. Also, I think that the movie does feel stretched out at 2 hours and 20 minutes (especially in its second and third acts), and I get the feeling that I’d feel the runtime and pacing a lot more if I watched it again.

Mikey Madison is stellar in the lead role of Anora. I do have issues with the way she was written, there isn’t much interiority given to her (it almost seemed purposeful), and for much of the second act, she’s just being dragged from place to place. Madison however gives a lot of layered nuances to her (not provided by the writing), and she balances the comedy and drama really well. The supporting cast are good too, including Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karaguilian and Vache Tovmasayan.

The direction from Sean Baker is great, I think it was stronger than his writing. It is visually stunning with its top notch cinematography, the editing is solid, and there’s a constant amount of energy felt throughout.

Anora is a solid and entertaining enough (if overlong and flawed) screwball comedy, greatly directed and with an excellent lead performance from Mikey Madison.