Anora (2024)
Directed by Sean Baker
A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.
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75 films that influenced Anora
What critics say influenced Anora
If Pretty Woman is a romantic adventure of people celebrating their authentic passion for each other, Anora is that times 100.
Anora is no fairytale or Pretty Woman-esque romantic comedy…
Baker’s subversively romantic, free-wheeling sex farce makes “Pretty Woman” look like a Disney movie.
Its visual language and layered bedlam evoke a re-envisioning of Pretty Woman…
…un inicio que recuerda a «Mujer Bonita» (1990) en clave de comedia romántica…
…definitively ending any false notions that Anora would follow the conventions of rom-coms à la Pretty Woman (1990).
Director
Josh Safdie
Critics invoke Safdie by name, and compare Anora to 1 of Safdie’s films.
Visuals
On Safdie, rather than any one film
Con un aire también al cine de los hermanos Safdie…
Similar modes of madness resonate from the recent films of the Safdie brothers…
There’s an almost Safdie-esque jangling energy to the film…
…a rowdy Safdie-style movie…
…redolent of the Safdies and Scorsese…
Anora, Sean Baker’s latest film following 2021's Cannes-premiering Red Rocket, is a raucous blast - a kinetic New York City screwball comedy that shares the chaotic energy of the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems and disguises a darker heart.
The film is equal parts rom-com, screwball comedy and Uncut Gems…
It packs 130 minutes to the brim with some of the most stress-inducing comedic moments that I’ve seen since, probably, “Uncut Gems.”
Like the mostly unsung Uncut Gems, it’s a New York movie with an unfashionably pungent sense of place, and it’s rowdy, raunchy, comic and tragic.
It’s as if you shot up the hapless enforcers of a Coen Brothers comedy with the adrenaline of Uncut Gems.
If Good Time and Uncut Gems were heart-clutching, cinematic panic attacks, Anora is in fine company, and a real banger.
She’s thinking, in particular, of Cinderella. Yes, she affirms: fuckin’ Cinderella.
Like Cinderella, there is also a heroine at the center of Anora whose dreams, hopes, and heartbreak are rendered so vibrantly that the film manages to reach out and wrap you in its embrace.
Much like the plot of Cinderella, which Ani mentions as her favourite Disney princess when dreaming of her future honeymoon…
The fairy tale begins to crumble, just like Cinderella’s carriage falling apart as it turns back into a pumpkin when Vanya’s parents get wind of the marriage.
…reverso realista de La cenicienta contemporánea…
Ani confesses a love of Disney princesses and Cinderella in particular…
By sheer volume of people screaming obscenities and insults at and past each other, Baker’s newest film harkens back to his breakthrough Tangerine, in which a trans sex worker recently released from jail embarks on a day-long journey to track down her cheating boyfriend (and also pimp).
Her quixotic quest to remain among Russian oligarchs is a riotously funny neorealist farce that will be familiar to fans of Tangerine and Red Rocket, though at times it feels like the rougher edges of Baker’s vision have been smoothed out in the interest of driving home an easily digestible allegory.
Set Tangerine’s frenzied tale of a transgender woman’s revenge against the glittering backdrop of Christmas Eve.
Baker brings the same spontaneous, seat-of-your-pants energy to “Anora” that he did to “Tangerine” before this, making what follows every bit as impulsive and unpredictable, captured in delicious, slightly oversaturated widescreen.
Much like with 2015’s exceptional Tangerine, Baker mounts a steep precipice with his characters to deposit them within a crescendo of connection.
…as depicted in his films Tangerine (a portrayal of Black transgender sex workers)…
Tangerine, The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021) are all vastly different stories, but together they forma nuanced and rich tapestry of those often pushed to society's fringes, depicting the lives of sex workers as simultaneously complex, hilarious, tragic and above all else, normal.
…a riotously funny neorealist farce that will be familiar to fans of Tangerine and Red Rocket…
Made a washed-up porn star an avatar for the American Dream in Red Rocket.
…and Red Rocket (a portrayal of a former porn star)…
Her quixotic quest to remain among Russian oligarchs is a riotously funny neorealist farce that will be familiar to fans of Tangerine and Red Rocket…
…so I can only compare Anora to the similarly fatalistic Red Rocket…
The Florida Project, which features Willem Dafoe in an Oscar-nominated supporting role, centers on the mischievous child of a sex worker, being raised in candy-colored squalor under the shadow of the Disney theme park.
…an arena Baker has studiously avoided in films like “Tangerine,” “The Florida Project” and “Red Rocket”…
Her delusion is buttressed by the architecture that surrounds her. Back in New York, Vanya’s mansion is an over-the-top space that complements the gaudiness of the Vegas suite, both on the opposite end of the spectrum from the tacky, castle-themed highway motel in The Florida Project (2017). In settings both grim and glamorous, Baker knows that despair is the bedrock for the false-front distractions of American kitsch.
He found a magic kingdom in the pastel purple of The Florida Project’s multi-storey inn.
The club scene of after-hours Queens is shot with the awe of Disneyworld in The Florida Project…
With films like Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket, most of his work focuses on the day-to-day life of sex workers…
Anora is far more a fairytale than any of its director Sean Baker’s past portraits of sex workers. Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket – at times, they can be a little sentimental, but they’re deeply and affectionately embedded in their respective worlds.
Films like Tangerine, Red Rocket and Starlet have set out to remove some of the stigma surrounding the line of work…
In Starlet (2012) and Tangerine (2015), for example, he draws indelible characters who sell access to their bodies while seeking meaningful connections elsewhere.
…(porn-stars in Starlet and Red Rocket, sex workers in Tangerine)…
Jane (Starlet)…
Micro-budget efforts like Take Out (2004) and Starlet (2012)…
…in his return to New York following 2008’s Prince of Broadway (2008)…
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Director
Martin Scorsese
Critics invoke Scorsese by name, and compare Anora to 2 of Scorsese’s films.
Visuals
On Scorsese, rather than any one film
Cinematographer Drew Daniels gives everything rich colors, shooting on film in a style that feels like Martin Scorsese meets the French New Wave.
…redolent of the Safdies and Scorsese…
…a stressful but humorous farce by way of Uncut Gems crossed with Martin Scorsese’s After Hours…
…part escalating nightmare comedy reminiscent of ’80s gems like “After Hours” and “Married to the Mob.”
Scorsese’s After Hours immediately comes to mind, as Baker treats us to short vignettes highlighting the boroughs of New York and all of their seedy culture. It’s the best kind of road movie, and during the course of the evening, Igor emerges from his quiet soldier persona and turns into something of a protector of Anora, once he realizes she really did love Ivan and wanted to stay married to him. She goes through the entire evening thinking Ivan feels the same way and will stand up to his parents once they arrive, but we suspect he’s a spineless jellyfish from the minute he bolts.
…an extended set piece involving a city-wide hunt for Ani’s husband recalls the frenetic energy of “After Hours,”…
No disrespect to the Sopranos cast, Deadwood’s William Sanderson, or Goodfellas’ Joe Pesci, but we need to carve out some space on the Mount Rushmore of comedy gangsters.
…her heavy Brooklyn accent possibly sourced from Goodfellas (1990), or maybe My Cousin Vinny (1992).
Director
Benny Safdie
Critics invoke Safdie by name, and compare Anora to 1 of Safdie’s films.
Visuals
On Safdie, rather than any one film
Con un aire también al cine de los hermanos Safdie…
Similar modes of madness resonate from the recent films of the Safdie brothers…
There’s an almost Safdie-esque jangling energy to the film…
…a rowdy Safdie-style movie…
…redolent of the Safdies and Scorsese…
There will likely be comparisons made between this film and the work of the Safdie Brothers, with much of this middle feeling similar to Good Time, though it is in the downshift where Baker finds something distinct from that.
…the whirlwind speed and cacophonous energy of a Safdie brothers movie (Good Times, Uncut Gems)…
If Good Time and Uncut Gems were heart-clutching, cinematic panic attacks, Anora is in fine company, and a real banger.
This extended middle section, in which the hapless quartet attempts to track down Ivan, has already been compared to Safdie brothers’ films Good Time or Uncut Gems…
Director
Howard Hawks
Critics invoke Hawks by name, and compare Anora to 2 of Hawks’s films.
Visuals Plot
On Hawks, rather than any one film
…the kind of screwball comedy that would've made Howard Hawks' ears perk up…
It also riffs on Capra, Wilder, Hawks, and Lubitsch.
Jury president Greta Gerwig said the picture reminded her of the “classic structures of Ernst Lubitsch or Howard Hawks”.
Instead, there's a kinship with Hollywood's screwball comedies of the 1930s, where an unlikely romance blossoms in the flurries of a rough and tumble escapade, like the beautiful zaniness of Bringing Up Baby (1938) or classic divorce scenario in The Awful Truth (1937), except equipped with the foul-mouthed glory and sexual fervor inherent to reality.
A better parallel, particularly after the chase begins, is with the classic screwball comedy of the 1930s and 1940s: The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday.
I was disturbed, though I later found myself thinking of Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday (1940), another film whose emotional weight risks getting lost in a flurry of frantic action.
A better parallel, particularly after the chase begins, is with the classic screwball comedy of the 1930s and 1940s: The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday.
A better parallel, particularly after the chase begins, is with the classic screwball comedy of the 1930s and 1940s: The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday.
Instead, there's a kinship with Hollywood's screwball comedies of the 1930s, where an unlikely romance blossoms in the flurries of a rough and tumble escapade, like the beautiful zaniness of Bringing Up Baby (1938) or classic divorce scenario in The Awful Truth (1937), except equipped with the foul-mouthed glory and sexual fervor inherent to reality.
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On Lubitsch, rather than any one film
…and more like “Home Alone” (1990) via Ernst Lubitsch and Julia Ducournau.
It also riffs on Capra, Wilder, Hawks, and Lubitsch.
Jury president Greta Gerwig said the picture reminded her of the “classic structures of Ernst Lubitsch or Howard Hawks”.
Much like the underrated recent film Hustlers, Anora takes us into the reality of stripping and sex work as a job that most other movies often use as background noise.
…he doesn’t have to show Madison pole dancing à la Jennifer Lopez in “Hustlers”…
The following act treads a similar tone to Lorene Scafaria’s slick yet tender Hustlers; like Constance Wu’s newbie Destiny, Ani works the room — albeit at a more confident tempo — flashing a broader, fixed smile, pouncing at the sign of opportunity, and fielding distasteful comments from her clients (“Does your family know that you do this?”).