Anora, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.

‘Anora’ is the first American movie since Terence Malick’s ‘The Tree of Life’ in 2011 to win the Palme d’Or, and it is a deserved award for Sean Baker who has been creating some of the most exciting movies of the last decade. Starring Mikey Madison in the titular role, it centres on the whirlwind romance and marriage between Anora (or Ani), a New York stripper (Madison) and Ivan (or Vanya(, the son of a Russian oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn), and the subsequent fallout when his family finds out about their relationship.

There’s very few filmmakers making movies like Sean Baker at the moment and ‘Anora’ is another distinctive piece of work that is electric, gripping and wildly unpredictable. It is loosely a romantic drama, albeit one unlike anything else you’ve ever seen before, and the first act of the movie is as exciting as anything you will have seen this year. Beginning with a scene at a New York strip club where Ani and Vanya first meet, it follows the couple as they spend more time together and despite the money exchanged, it really captures the giddy, euphoric joy of the early days of romance. Vanya is very immature and Ani is naïve about how things might play out, but that only makes us want to root for them more, so it’s all the more powerful when it becomes apparent that this feeling isn’t going to last forever.

If the first part of the movie owes gratitude to the screwball comedies of the Golden Age of Hollywood, the second part is altogether more sobering. When reality hits it feels like a ton of bricks, as a group of men hired by Vanya’s parents effectively kidnap her with demands to annul the marriage. From here on in it’s a different type of movie, but no less compelling for it. Mikey Madison isn’t an actress that many will have been familiar with prior to this (unless you’ve seen the TV series ‘Better Things’ where she plays one of Pamela Adlon’s daughters), but she will certainly be better known after this incredible performance which is undoubtedly one of the best of the year. She covers a whole range of emotions over the course of ‘Anora’ and her strident, confident display drives the story forward. The remainder of the cast will be less familiar but if anyone has caught the Finnish-Russian movie ‘Compartment No. 6’ or the Russian movie ‘Leviathan’ they may recognise Yura Borisov (Igor) or Aleksei Serebryakov (Nikolai).

One of the things I really like about Sean Baker’s movies is the lack of judgment about how people live their lives and make a living, and that’s never more apparent in how Ani is portrayed here, aided of course by Madison’s bold display. It is incredibly funny at times and you will laugh a lot, but that humour only serves to underline the sharpness of the writing and the storytelling here, which are as strong as we’ve came to expect from Baker. ‘Anora’ is a triumph and a terrific movie, although I’ll hold it just a tad below ‘Red Rocket’ as my favourite of Baker’s movies (at this stage anyway!).

Rating: 4/5

Directed By: Sean Baker

Starring: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Aleksei Serebryakov, Darya Ekamasova, Lindsey Normington and Ivy Wolk

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt28607951/