By Steve Crum

Feature movies with a prostitute as the main character have existed for nearly a century. They include Anna Christie with Greta Garbo, Rain (Joan Crawford), Klute (Jane Fonda), Irma la Douce (Shirley MacLaine), Pretty Woman (Julia Roberts), and Midnight Cowboy (Jon Voight). 

Add Mikey Madison to that stellar list. Make that the Oscar nominated Mikey Madison. She memorably portrays the title character in Anora. (The film has received five other Oscar noms as well, including Best Picture.) 

Everyone in the cast is way above average, including Yura Borisov as Igor. (He is an Oscar nom for Best Supporting Actor.) Sean Baker (The Florida Project) is director, producer, screen scribe and editor—all nominated. All said, the combination of that creativity results in a unique and unforgettable film. 

Anora is touted as an “American comedy drama,” which indeed it is. It is also wild, raucous, and sexually explicit. Label it Super-R. The story opens in Anora (“Ani”) Mikheeva’s (Mikey Madison) main workplace, a strip club brothel in New York City. Her prostitution demands sometime take her and a client to a nearby location outside the club. That scenario occurs when she hooks up (yeah, a pun) with a Russian young man, Ivan (“Vanya”) Zakharov, a man-child played by Mark Eydelshteyn. After some horizontal activity in a back room at the club, Ivan insists Anora party with him for a week ($15,000) while staying in his rich parents’ nearby mansion. Mom and Dad are still in Russia. 

The set-up escalates into a private plane trip to Las Vegas, more sex…and marriage! They return to NYC, word gets out to Ivan’s parents, and the outraged family calls on their hired fixer, an Armenian priest, to retaliate. In one of the funniest bits in the film Toros (Karren Karagulian), the head handler, is in the middle of a christening when he gets a call to dissolve Ivan and Anora’s marriage. He immediately responds, running out of the ceremony and taking two of his strong arms with him: Igor and Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan).  

Be prepared for pushback from the newlyweds: screaming, threats, throwing things, tying up, barfing, a couple of car escapades, and general chaos. Everything escalates when the Russian parents arrive to make things worse. 

Much of Anora’s dialogue is laced with foul language, particularly the f-word. In fact, her lines are a close runner-up to the nasties in 1992’s Glengarry Glen Ross. Then again, Anora’s use seems totally natural and expected. She uses the word as both punctuation and angry leverage. 

By the story’s resolution, Anora has withstood numerous challenges. A happy ending? Not necessarily. 

Up to and particularly including the last 30 minutes of this 139-minute gem of originality, I had zero idea where the story was going. Thusly, my affection for this terrific movie was a given.

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GRADE on an A-F Scale: A