Anora
Director Sean Baker’s enthralling Palme d’Or winner can feel like Pretty Woman with a Russian accent and a dark side.
Film-maker Sean Baker made a big splash in 2015 with the bravura Tangerine. Shot entirely on an iPhone, the story about a transgender prostitute out for revenge on her cheating boyfriend garnered several awards. Baker’s journey into urban social-realism continued with The Florida Project, which again starred novice actors, as well as Willem Dafoe. Baker’s latest, Anora, won the 2024 Palme d’Or at Cannes.
It’s a tale of sex workers and immigrants, this time an exotic dancer of Russian heritage brought up in Brooklyn and her ill-fated relationship with Vanya, the playboy son of a Russian oligarch.
Ani (Mikey Madison, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood) meets her dashing young prince at her strip club, among the writhing bare backsides and pumping music of the film’s opening scenes. Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), who throws money around like water and courts Ani in adorably hybrid English-Russian, falls hard for the feisty New Yorker and the two start hanging out.
A hasty marriage and a fat diamond ring later, Vanya’s parents are threatening to return him to Russia and his father’s flunkeys have a fight on their hands.
This Romeo and Juliet-meets-Pretty Woman-meets-Uncut Gems of a film is not only a blast to watch, but an object lesson in writing strong characters who elicit our sympathy, despite their dubious life choices and their unlikeability.
Once again, Baker has cast two stunningly talented newcomers and creates an enthralling, outrageous, utterly enjoyable story out of their misfortunes.
In her first lead role, Madison is a revelation, demonstrating how it’s not the sex and dancing that’s tiring in Ani’s line of work, but the incessant obligation to fake being cheerful and enticing. Meanwhile, Vanya bounds about like a puppy, running off his mouth and his father’s credit cards.
And just when you thought these two lovers couldn’t get any cuter, Baker evokes the Tarantino-penned True Romance and brings in the heavies. As the oafish Armenian henchmen, Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan play it hilarious and then heartfelt, particularly as a surprising connection grows between warden and prisoner.
It’s also a fascinating insight into the lives of the rich and Russian – something most of us will never get to be.
Rating out of five: ★★★★½
Anora, directed by Sean Baker, is in cinemas now.
All We Imagine As Light
The friendship of three women is at the centre of a touching drama set against the bustle of India’s biggest city.
This gently engrossing character study about three very different women speaks quietly but assuredly of societal expectations and gender-based restrictions in modern-day India.
Three years ago, its director, Payal Kapadia, defied expectations (Indian film is rarely recognised by highbrow festivals) to win Best Documentary at Cannes for her mixed-media debut, A Night of Knowing Nothing.
Now, with All We Imagine as Light, her first fiction feature, the heralded young Indian film-maker added the Cannes Grand Prix (second prize) to her mantelpiece.
It feels almost like a hybrid documentary as Kapadia’s self-penned story incorporates myriad scenes of Mumbai street life into its portrait of the everyday.
Three women’s lives intersect and pave the way for an unanticipated journey of healing and revelation.
Two of them work tirelessly as nurses at the local hospital and share a small flat: vivacious rule-breaker Anu (Divya Prabha), who is having a secret relationship with a young Muslim man, and the older, more cautious Prabha (Kani Kusruti), whose husband has long since disappeared to Europe leaving her in an uncertain silence. The oldest woman is Parvaty, the hospital cook, whom Prabha takes pity on when Parvaty is threatened with eviction.
Kapadia’s film subtly recounts the litany of challenges faced by the female population. It’s a world in which a woman will be given a bucket and 1000 rupees if she can persuade her husband to have a vasectomy – but few men acquiesce.
Meanwhile, Anu’s parents are pressuring her into an arranged marriage and Prabha’s own romantic hopes are in limbo. “It’s no use, Anu,” Prabha tells her with a heavy look of experience. “You can’t escape your fate.”
The three talented actors move with naturalism and restraint through a story in which little appears to happen for the viewer, but huge interior change occurs for the characters.
It’s a touching and peaceful tale, full of tenderness for its heroines, and an underlying celebration of female-supported power.
Rating out of five: ★★★★
All We Imagine As Light, directed by Payal Kapadia, is in cinemas now.
