Anora

December 6 – 10

friday – tuesday

7:00 pm nightly
1:30 Sunday Matinée
18A — 2hr 15min
2024 ‧ Romance / Comedy / Tragedy / Caper

The funny, chaotic, tender Anora is a Cinderella tale with sex workers. Sean Baker’s thrilling film, starring Mikey Madison as a New York sex worker, pushes comic misadventure to the brink of chaos. When Baker won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for his new movie, Anora, he dedicated the award to “all sex workers, past, present and future.” It was a fitting shout-out from a director who put transgender sex workers front and center in his buddy comedy Tangerine and cast Simon Rex as a scheming ex-porn star in Red Rocket.

On the surface, Sean Baker’s powerful, spirited and rollicking Anora unfolds wildly with an often-comedic tone, through several impeccably orchestrated, high-energy set pieces laced with wise-cracking troupers. What Baker has created here is nothing short of pure movie magic— his smartly interwoven urban machinations make you giggle and inexplicably tear up on repeat (sometimes within the same sequence), while somehow keeping you acutely aware of the sorrow that is bound to rise to the surface. Anora is easily one of Baker’s funniest works — and, by the end, one of the saddest. It’s a film of unflagging comic energy and roiling emotion, both courtesy of its star, Mikey Madison, best known for her chilling supporting roles in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood and the fifth Scream movie. She gives a dazzling star turn here as Anora, or Ani, a 20-something exotic dancer at a high-priced Manhattan strip club.

As frenetic as it is on the surface, Anora has an unmistakable moral undertow. This may be Baker’s latest story of a sex worker, but it’s also a tribute to workers in general. His sympathies are forever with those just trying to do their job, whether it’s the cleaners who show up early each morning to tidy up Ivan’s latest mess, or a harried tow-truck driver who nearly derails the plot. Rest assured, no one you’ll come to care about in this miracle of a film will be left without a trace of hope, even after an ending that arrives like a gut-punch. Having filled their lives with so much tenderness and well-researched details, Baker cares about them just as much. It’s the humanist in him.