Anora
anora is raw, intimate, and quietly devastating. it starts playful, funny even. it’s the kind of movie where you think you know where it is going: you don’t. trust me. by halfway, you realise you are watching something much deeper than a simple love story.
mikey madison is simply unreal in this. her performance feels lived in with equal parts funny and heartbreak. it is so human. you believe in everything she does because you understand why she does it. she is impulsive, messy and hopeful because she wants something real and everytime the world reminds her that she cannot have it? she doubles down.
what makes anora so good is how it handles tone. sean baker knows exactly when to let you laugh and when to pull the rug out from under you. the shift from chaotic romance to gut punch drama is seamless and the whole thing is shot in a way that feels intimate without ever feeling exploitative. it’s all close, emotionally and visually. you’re right there with her, whether you want to be or not.
and a huge part of the film (and what makes it feel so lived in) is the language. the russian spoken throughout the film isn’t just a detail, it is a pulse. it grounds everything and makes the story feel that much more real in a way english alone couldn’t. the moment between anora and the boy’s parents (all in russian) feel like a completely different movie layered on top of the one you were just watching and suddenly it is no longer a love story: we are thrown into a war of class, culture, and control and anora is alone in it.
you can feel how alienated she becomes, not just linguistically, but culturally, emotionally. she’s the outsider. the american. the worker. the fantasy they want to erase. it’s so rare to see russian used in a film so naturally without subtitles spoon feeding you every line. baker respects his characters enough to let them exist in the full complexity of their language and culture without translating every second of it for the audiences comfort.
by the end, all that energy and warmth anora brought to the story is met with something cold and impossible to fight. and it’s all there. in the body language, in the tension, and yes, in the words we can’t always understand.
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