Anora, Sean Baker, and Cinema of Attention
Sean Baker has been making a certain kind of movie for twenty years. You watch Tangerine and Florida Project and Red Rocket knowing that you are in the hands of a filmmaker who is allergic to looking away. Anora is Baker's Palme d'Or winner and his most fully realized film, and its central artistic gesture is this: the camera stays on the face for longer than you expect.
What the camera is looking at, in Anora's most important scenes, is Mikey Madison — previously a young character actress with strong bits in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Scream (2022), here emerging as a lead of remarkable instinct. She plays Ani, a Brighton Beach sex worker who makes a spontaneous, reckless, funny marriage to the son of a Russian oligarch and then spends the back half of the film discovering what happens when the family finds out.
A Film That Refuses to Look Away
The entire second half of Anora is one sustained chase — Ani and her husband's minders chasing him through Brooklyn and Manhattan, Ani exhausted, arguing, grieving, and occasionally laughing about it. Baker lets these scenes run. When Ani yells, the camera does not cut to reaction shots. When she is humiliated, you sit inside the humiliation with her. When she finally begins to understand what is going to happen to her, Baker stays on the face as that understanding lands.
This is simple to describe and almost impossible to do well. Most directors will reach for the cut. Baker trusts his actors and he trusts the audience.
There is a shot near the end — I won't spoil it — that holds on Madison's face for what feels like a full minute. It is the most emotionally naked minute of cinema I have seen this year.
The Rest of the Cast
Yura Borisov, as the Armenian fixer Igor, is the film's soul. Karren Karagulian as Toros, the Russian Orthodox priest-godfather who shepherds the chaos, is comic genius. Vache Tovmasyan as Garnick makes a man with a cracked skull into one of the funniest characters of the year. The Brighton Beach Russian-American milieu feels lived-in, not researched — probably because Baker spent years around it.
Where to See It
Anora is playing in Canada at Cineplex Varsity & VIP in Toronto, Scotiabank Theatre Toronto, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Cineplex Cinemas Eglinton Town Centre, and at arthouse screens in Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary and Ottawa. The Bloor Hot Docs in Toronto picks it up in May.
This is not a children's film. It is a very adult film, in the way adult films used to be — not titillating, not cynical, but unflinching. Go with a friend. Have dinner after. You'll have things to say.