Sean Baker has a fondness and a fascination for exploring the fringes of American society. His more recent films, especially Tangerine and Red Rocket, have featured workers in various aspects of the sex industry but also found humour in their situations and adventures. Baker continues that trend in Anora, which became the first American film in over a decade to leave Cannes with the Palme D’Or, and in the process features a star-making performance from Mikey Madison in the title role.

Anora prefers to be called Ani, somewhat shunning her Russian heritage at the strip joint where she works in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach. Her manager calls on her combination of skills to tempt the visiting son of a Russian oligarch to part with his hardly hard-earned cash. Ivan (Mark Eidelstein), who calls himself Vanya, is instantly smitten and wants to spend more time with her. Presumably Pretty Woman has made its way to Russia as soon Vanya is offering to pay Ani to accompany him for the week, and before you can say “Green Card” they’ve upped to Vegas and eloped.

All very Hollywood romance, but if Vanya thinks his parents are going to be in any way happy with his actions, then he’s very much mistaken. After discovering the nuptials on social media, his parents send Vanya’s handler Toros (Karren Karagulian), a nearby priest, to head to the boy’s lavish mansion and to take the pair to get the marriage annulled. Despite having additional help in the form of a pair of henchmen, Vanya gives them the slip and it’s now down to Ani to try to sort the situation.

Baker doesn’t attempt to shy away from the nature of Ani’s day (or night) job, but she’s a sympathetic character who clearly feels that her Russian knight in shining armour is there to whisk her away from a life of mundanity. The lifestyle is appealing to her and her friends, but she’s still an old-fashioned girl who dreams of romance and waits almost despondently for Vanny to finish his latest turn on a video game. She’s keen to educate him into his role, and there’s a sweetness to their initial brief courtship which is entirely reliant on the commitment that Madison brings to her performance.

In a heartbeat, both Ani and the film switch when Toros and his goons arrive, and it’s to Baker’s further credit that the hard-right tonal turn from idealised love story into broad farce doesn’t jar in the slightest. Ani realises she’s going to have to work hard to maintain the opportunity that she’s been given and she’s more than a match for the three men sent to sort the situation, both physically and verbally. As Anora the film evolves into a chase movie, hunting Vanya across the city to drag him to his and Ani’s inexorable fate of separation, Anora the character continues to develop, sparring with her handlers and attempting to be on her best behaviour for the arrival of the new in-laws.

The world of Brighton Beach feels lived-in and fragile; Baker populates the wide margins of his societal fringe with an array of unlikely characters who still come across as persuasive in the world created for them. Chief among these is Yura Borisov as Igor, the younger of the Russian handlers and the only one even vaguely sympathetic to Ani’s plight. We would still be rooting for Ani, even without the support of Igor, but his conflicting loyalties add valuable shading to the story, which Baker keeps moving at a constant, frenetic velocity without ever tipping over. The director also reunites with Red Rocket cinematographer Drew Daniels, and the decision to shoot on film also helps to ground the group’s adventures in believability, even as the farce of the situation intensifies.

Anora is the Cinderella story in reverse: it starts by bestowing its heroine with riches and a happy ever after, then turns the clock back to before midnight and attempts to return her to rags. By turns perversely romantic, broadly hilarious and affectingly bittersweet, it’s a refinement of his existing style and themes but a tender triumph for Sean Baker, carried effortlessly by Mikey Madison. Whether glamorous or glum, it’s Madison’s magnetic creation that makes Anora constantly compelling.

Anora screened at the London Film Festival 2024, and is showing at select UK and Irish cinemas