Anora

Anora (Mikey Madison), or Ani as she prefers, is a fiery young stripper at a Manhattan club leading a mostly unremarkable life until the night Russian man-child Vanya (Mark Eidelshtein) walks into the club. Hitting it off, Vanya returns night after night eventually paying for private dates with Ani leading to a weeklong girlfriend experience of booze, drugs, sex, and partying ending in to a trip to Vegas, an unexpected proposal, and marriage. It seems Ani has hit the jackpot a rags to riches story. However, when Ani's family discovers what Vanya has done things get nuts.

As we see early on, Ani is a realist and the film doesn't shy away from the transactional nature of her relationship with Vanya nor her restraint in accepting the legitimacy of his proposal. It seems Vanya, who wants nothing more than to keep the party going, is being forced by his family to return to Russia and join the family business but hopes marrying an American will buy him some additional time.

What his rash decision, one that his family only discovers through rumor and gossip, buys him is a pissed-off godfather (Karren Karagulian) and his goons (Vache Tovmasyan and Yura Borisov) showing up at his home and insisting on Ani's participation in an annulment and searching for Vanya in one crazy night in New York City.

What writer/director Sean Baker delivers with Anora is a more truthful version of Pretty Woman centered around deeply-flawed human beings with the Cinderella story crashing spectacularly the day after Ani achieving her happily ever after. As crazy as Ani's romance with Vanya is, if it can indeed be called that, what happens afterwards ramps up to 11 as the film embraces dark humor and farce in shattering Ani's world. Vanya being nowhere to be found puts her at the mercy of her family demanding her assistance in an annulment, through some questionable means, while Ani holds out hope that she can cling to this life a little longer if she can only find him.

Without it's humor, Anora would be a brutal film to have to endure with a pretty bleak view of love. However, that's the element that makes everything click into the kind of "wild night" story that could only ever be half believed. Despite her calculating nature, Mikey Madison's Ani is the heart of the film, which starts empty, is filled by Vanya's attention and money, and then shattered by his cowardice in running away and leaving her to deal with his family. She's terrific here in a defiance that never wavers despite circumstances too big for her to control. And it's in that desperate grasp for hope that we see the realist forced to put faith in the most questionable of places - the husband who runs away at the first sign of trouble.

Karagulianis equally terrific as a priest whose world is turned upside down by the news of Vanya's marriage and his attempts to rectify the situation only spin events further and further out of control as in his wildest dreams he never expected to run into someone as combative as Ani. Borisov plans an important role as the mostly silent muscle and witness to events, perhaps alone realizing how insane things have gotten and the only one who shows any compassion for Ani's situation. In an amazing bit of filmmaking, the pieces all fit together for a story you can't quite believe while being unable to look away.

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• Title: Anora
• IMDb: link