Anora (2024) - TIFF Review By Ben Scanga

Sean Baker is a human that loves other humans. He’s been proving this non-stop for two decades now since he first started making heads turn with Take Out (which he co-directed alongside Shih-Ching Tsou), an emotionally charged and sobering day-in-the-life of an immigrant struggling to pay off his smuggling debt while facing the tension around his presence in America’s society. As his filmography grew larger, especially around the time The Florida Project began attracting eyeballs from festival-goers worldwide, so did Baker’s ambition and sense of scale. Anora, his eighth feature length film, effectively acts as a sprawling, kaleidoscope-drenched puzzle, composed of little pieces from all of his previous efforts. When taking a step back and acknowledging the bigger picture of what’s being portrayed on screen (including, and most importantly, how it’s being portrayed), it’s hard to view this as anything other than his greatest accomplishment to date; it’s a feature that highlights all of Baker’s strongest narrative elements and cranks them all the way to eleven on the dial. The film’s narrative follows the growth of the newly-found romantic relationship between the titular Anora, a 23-year old sex worker, and Ivan, a 21 year-old Russian oligarch. As the narrative progresses, and both of their personal lives begin to get heavily involved with one another, things begin spiraling further out of control, in a wave-pool of excess and hedonism. 

Anora shines so bright in this movie, from beginning to end. Mikey Madison’s performance only boosts this fact to an astronomical regard, fully shining in the driver’s seat of the narrative. Her charisma and stage presence beautifully compliment and fully take advantage of the world of picturesque set pieces and coordinated landscapes that Baker is wielding, with every new scene and environment feeling like it's bound to burst at any moment with opportunity in terms of character exploration. The harshest shift in tone comes from the second act’s arrival, where the glossy, bubblegum lifestyle of devil-may-care indulgence we were once accustomed to quickly shifts into an area of gray; an area of uncertainty; an area of danger. If this same narrative was in the hands of a different filmmaker, it’s easy to see how the careful balancing act of tone and growth could be entirely spoiled. However, Baker’s empathy and compassion towards Anora as a human being is what saves it from falling head first into a pit of distaste. It’s almost impossible to believe Baker was able to pull off a storytelling technique that’s so abrasive and jarring without sacrificing the flow of the narrative. It all culminates into an epic spectacle that’s impossible to break your eyes away from. 

That’s not to say the film isn’t patient. Coming in at a very solid 139 minutes, it’s not only Baker’s longest film but simultaneously his most rich and rewarding. The film is clearly and cleverly split into two tonally polar-opposite halves, (think Vox Lux, The Iron Claw). The first half of the film gets the audience familiar with Anora’s day-to-day universe, dealing with clientele and toxic co-workers before fate sticks her in the lap of Ivan, who immediately warms up to her and encourages her company. Anora’s quaint but vibrant neon-blue aesthetic, with the introduction of Ivan, evolves into an ultra-powerful montage of bright, piercing colors and pulsing electronic beats. This momentum grows with severity, until it spins out of control and Ivan’s parents (alongside their hired personnel) enter the picture. Baker reacts to this narrative event by flicking a visual lightswitch. Suddenly, the tone is melodramatic and Daniels’ photography begins emphasizing and highlighting the outlines of every frozen-over, snow-slicked area. However, the camera remains hostile (in (semi-)trademark Baker fashion), anxiously observing and honing in on elements-of-intrigue that lay crucial to the scene taking place. Both of these halves, respectively, dive deep into the wants and wishes of the characters we’ve come to know over the runtime, leaving everyone on screen with four-dimensional depth and endless emotional attachment. It’s such a beautiful, albeit gut-wrenching, spectacle to see play out, watching Baker intricately weave the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly: the human. 

Anora is bound to leave a profound impact on anyone who ends up watching it. Whether their personal feelings are positive or negative, it’s far too endearing and passionate to be quickly filtered out of the brain. This is one of those works that quietly haunts the corners of your brain in subconscious moments throughout the day, that pops up once in conversation and moments of introspection consistently. At the end of the film, with its harsh cut to black and its end credits entirely void of music, you’re left with nothing to do but sit back in awe. Just wait until this thing has its theatrical release, it has the potential to become a phenomenon. What do you get when you combine Take-Out’s sense of anxiety with The Prince of Broadway’s frantic cinematography, The Florida Project’s powerful sense of character and Tangerine’s ecstatic need to experiment? You get Sean Baker’s magnum opus: Anora.