It’s a huge task for any filmmaker to try to bring back something from the past on screen: at a time when cinema is changing rapidly, it feels almost impossible.
But Sean Baker had an intention with his latest effort Anora, one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2024 and the winner of this year’s Palme D’Or – to reintroduce something to modern-day cinema that has been missing.
Of his inspiration for the effervescent Anora, he tells Metro that it’s ‘films from the 80s that were dramas or dramadies made for adults that we’re not seeing a lot of these days.’
‘And I think that was part of the goal with this movie, to bring something like that back to the cinema,’ he shares while continuing the film’s intense press tour at the London Film Festival, alongside leading lady Mikey Madison.
Anora focuses on a free-spirited Brooklyn-based stripper and sex worker (Madison) who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch to create a fairytale escape from her life. And, as you’d expect, it’s already creating major Oscar buzz.
Baker’s version of ‘dramedy’ actually encompasses drama, thriller, slapstick comedy, a coming of age story, a rom-com and a bit of a road movie. Add all that together with his interest in focusing on people living on the margins of society, who feel uncannily real, and no one is really making films like Baker in 2024.
They’re vibrant, unpredictable and about as far away as you can get away from studio tentpole movies based on superheroes, with their accompanying mega budgets.
He also has a knack for casting raw, untried talent – sometimes non-professional actors – but his star-making has perhaps never been on such display as in Anora, with the commanding Madison at the head of a dynamic international cast largely unknown to a mainstream audience.
Baker has been a prominent name on the indie circuit since his breakthrough with 2015 film Tangerine, shot using iPhones, before gathering plenty of attention for 2017’s The Florida Project, which was named one of the top 10 films of the year by the AFI and garnered its star Willem Dafoe an Oscar nomination.
But the hype for Anora has been something else since it premiered at Cannes Film Festival to glowing reviews (it currently holds a stunning 99% score on Rotten Tomatoes) and snagged its top prize, with praise for the film plastering the more discerning corners of Instagram, TikTok and Letterboxd.
‘It’s funny that Mikey’s first film festival was Cannes in competition, where we end up winning the Palme D’Or – it’s kind of insane. I’ve started at the Z-level film festivals and have made my way up over the years!’ he laughs of the huge high they are both now riding thanks to Anora.
‘To be fair, please scroll to the bottom of my IMDb – there’s been some interesting things,’ Madison, 25, gamely retorts.
Up until now, she is probably best known for 2022’s Scream as well as appearing as Charles Manson cult member Susan ‘Sadie’ Atkins in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Both are high profile parts, but fade into the background compared to Anora’s impact.
Winning the Palme D’Or was Baker’s ‘dream come true’, but it’s not one he foresaw coming to pass.
‘I never thought it would happen with this film because it’s rare that an overt comedy wins at Cannes – and for me to not only to win the Palme D’Or, but have it presented by George Lucas? Wow, that was just gravy,’ he beams.
It also isn’t a film in which audiences will anticipate hearing Take That’s Greatest Day pulsing away on the soundtrack, but Anora is happy to subvert expectations there too.
Thanks to both its storyline and the excitement generated, there have been comparisons made to 90s rom-com Pretty Woman – although Anora has a more realistic, nuanced take on sex work, better aligned with a modern audience.
‘It wasn’t something that was in my head while we were filming, but I love that film, and it’s a very iconic, impactful one,’ the softly spoken Madison says, whose career will shoot into the stratosphere off the back of Anora.
‘There are lots of films that in hindsight, I realise have had some sort of influence,’ adds Baker, who also cites Coming to America and the films of Jonathan Demme (Married to the Mob, Philadelphia).
Like Coming to America, Anora views New York City through an immigrant lens, with Anora (Ani) from the Russian-American community in Brighton Beach. And like Demme, Baker treats his audience as adults with a mature, hard to define story.
He avoids thinking about the ideal ‘or even the ‘proper’ follow up’, given the expectations around Anora during awards season, but knows people might think he sticks to one topic with his moviemaking.
‘I’m just going to make the film that is the best film I can make, and not fall into stuff like, “Am I not breaking outside of my wheelhouse? What if I cover sex work again, are people going to be seeing it too much as a schtick and rolling their eyes?”’
Sex work has been a prominent part of his movies, including Tangerine and Red Rocket (2021) – but Baker clearly has no interest in perpetuating any shame around the profession, or defining his characters by it.
‘I’ve been trying to do that for, like, the last five films,’ he says. ‘The shame is already out there, [it’s] what society has put upon this occupation, and so my approach has to be objective and non-judgmental.’
Anora comes across as a fascinating slice of real life – if you were lucky enough to be servicing the fast-living and immature son of a very wealthy Russian gangster living in a glitzy mansion.
Anora and Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn, also styled as Eidelstein) fall head over heels in love/lust and elope, but once the news reaches Russia, Ani’s fairytale is threatened as Vanya’s parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled. Handlers are also sent to try and resolve the situation, including an Orthodox priest (Karren Karagulian) and a reluctant heavy, Igor (a winning performance from Yura Borisov). Suffice it to say, they are no match for Anora.
‘With this film, I pushed it a little into allowing more comedy, which felt dangerous at first, tackling serious subject matter,’ shares Baker.
It certainly gives Anora a lot of its sparkle, as well as allowing Madison to excel in her tender and layered performance.
‘The way I see it is that life is a is a balance of comedy and pathos, so without that comedy, it would be false,’ he adds.
Baker first had the idea for Anora over 15 years ago, but says it was ‘100% different’ to how the movie ended up.
Initially it was a buddy-buddy movie with male protagonists, set in the Russian gangster world, which now is ‘a stereotype that I wasn’t interested in putting any more of on the big screen’.
He also doesn’t think he could have made Anora as it is now, back then, because he had yet to ‘to gain the trust of people’ with film credits or land financial backing for a film without an established star.
‘Just to get a budget for anything that doesn’t have A-list talent these days in Hollywood, it’s very difficult,’ he explains, before revealing that his producers 15 years ago ‘wanted to hire Tom Hardy and Ryan Gosling to do Russian accents’ in that iteration of the movie.
‘And that goes exactly against everything with my approach to filmmaking, so I’m really happy it didn’t happen at that time,’ Baker adds, still almost in disbelief.
If it’s not clear, Baker does things very much his way. There are no test screenings for his films, for example, because he’s not interested in ‘mass consumption’.
‘Our film is a specialty film that just happens to be connecting with people. I never want to, in any way, shape or structure or design my film for the lowest common denominator,’ he states firmly.
To lead the film as Anora, Madison knew her most important job was to portray sex work as accurately as possible to show ‘the nuance of what that kind of job is like’.
The actress admits she went into her research ‘quite naively’, but was delighted by the warm reception she received, including from Andrea Werhun, the film’s chief consultant and a former sex worker.
‘I was honestly able to learn from a blank slate in a way, which was amazing, and I’ve completely fallen in love with that community, and have so much admiration for all of these incredible people,’ Madison continues..
In what is a huge compliment, Baker wrote the part for Madison, who says the lessons from 10 years establishing a career helped her ‘become the kind of actor that I was making this movie’, building her confidence.
‘I think maybe five years ago, if I had taken this job, it would be a very different character, a different experience, for everybody and me,’ Madison muses.
She also knows how one-of-a-kind Anora has been for her, both as an actress and in terms of personal growth, as she looks to what’s next.
‘I want to be as in love with my character and the story as I was making this movie. Because my job is an emotional job, and I feel like that’s really needed, at least for me,’ she reflects.
‘So I want to feel how I felt making this movie, which I don’t think is very common – but it’s what I hope for.’
Anora is released in UK cinemas on Friday, November 1.
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