T his was a Cannes that turned out to be about love, and the Palme d’Or went to a love story that knocks down the whole idea of a Cinderella romance, while also, in some mysterious and delicate way, passionately believing in it. Sean Baker’s Anora is superbly acted by its star, Mikey Madison, who plays an erotic dancer and escort in New York called Ani (short for Anora) who finds herself in an exclusive commercial relationship with the wastrel son of a Russian oligarch, called Ivan, played by Mark Eidelstein. Anora review – stellar turn from Mikey Madison in sex work non-love story Read more Her client becomes deliriously infatuated with smart, gorgeous Ani, proposes marriage in Vegas, seals the deal in an all-night wedding chapel and then there is the long and gruesome blowback from his Russian parents who despatch a number of unhappy and almost Pinteresque goons to clear up the mess somehow, to intimidate or pay off Ani — to annul the marriage and annul her existence.
View image in fullscreen A still from Anora. Photograph: PR Handout Anora would be nothing without the intelligence and integrity of Mikey Madison’s portrayal. Her Ani is not a cynic or a gold digger: she never set out to entrap Ivan but chooses to believe his commitment, chooses to believe that this was a marriage that could work; she sees that he brings the financial capital while she brings the desirability capital.
But this is the way of the world — and she loves him, while not seeing what we c.