Sex, strippers and screwball comedy: an Oscar-winning mix for Anora?

Mikey Madison was a surprise winner at the BAFTAs for Anora, and the movie might pull off an even bigger shock on Oscars night.

Mikey Madison as Anora, with Mark Eydelshteyn as Vanya. Picture: Drew Daniels.

It is safe to suggest that Demi Moore was shocked when she lost the Best Actress BAFTA to newcomer Mikey Madison, 25, from the dark comedy, Anora. Moore had been a sure thing, dominating that category since her first big win at the Golden Globes in January. So when Madison’s name was announced from the stage Moore was captured delivering a wide-eyed, cheek-blowing “whoa!”.

That gesture, it transpires, could soon represent the response of a gobsmacked film industry because against all odds Anora has positioned itself as a wildcard frontrunner for Oscars glory next week. This scrappy, low-budget ($US6m/$9.5m) indie about a Brooklyn stripper and a feckless Russian playboy – a film that was much appreciated at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or, but otherwise seemed ­destined for cult status – has suddenly leapt ahead of all those muscular, more expensive and mainstream Oscar rivals. Whoa ­indeed!

Madison won the best actress BAFTA for her performance in Anora. Picture: Getty Images

Anora recently won best picture at the Producers Guild of America awards. This is a near-ironclad prediction of an Oscar triumph: in previous years of “major upsets”, such as the wins for Green Book (2019) and Coda (2022), the PGA always predicted it correctly. Equally, a recent Directors Guild of America award for Sean Baker, Anora’s director, plus a best film win at the Critics Choice Awards, suggest that the film is emerging as this year’s disrupter.

It makes sense. Anora has none of the baggage attached to the other frontrunners. There is no cancel-culture noise surrounding it (unlike the Emilia Perez racist tweets controversy). Nor does it need to shake off accusations of slippery hi-tech manipulation (The Brutalist used AI software to sharpen some scenes with Hungarian dialogue). And nor, unlike Conclave, can it be accused of being too stodgy, too male and, well, too traditional.

Instead, what it has by the bucketload is authenticity. The story follows the exploits of a resilient stripper and escort called Anora “Ani” Mikheeva (Madison), who is hired by Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the mercurial son of a Russian oligarch with access to a giant Brighton Beach mega-mansion, for a single week of hedonistic partying and sensual pleasure. During that time, however, an apparently heartfelt connection develops and Vanya hatches a crazed plan to marry Ani in Vegas, thereby simultaneously celebrating their love and nabbing himself a green card.

However, Vanya’s all-powerful and wildly protective family (armed bodyguards are involved) hear of the plan and fly directly to America, and there begins a screwball comedy of funny, furious and emotionally resonant proportions.

The film, shot over 37 days beginning in February 2023, takes the familiar Pretty Woman-style premise of “troubled but very rich guy hires charismatic sex worker for personally transformative misadventure” and runs it through the honesty mill.

Writer-director Baker is on a mission, he has claimed, to humanise sex workers on film. Two of his other movies, Tangerine and Red Rocket, featured escorts and porn stars, and for Anora he hired former strippers and sex workers as co-stars and consultants. Former escort Andrea Werhun (author of Modern Whore) also served as a consultant and “inspirational source”, according to ­Madison, for the role of Ani. “She talked about enjoying sex and being really good at her job. And I wanted Ani to have that,” Madison said.

Until now Madison’s career has been marked by two minor yet notable roles, as a killer in the fifth Scream instalment and, more arrestingly, as a feral hippie psychopath in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (she’s one of the would-be Brad Pitt killers in the film’s climactic confrontation). After watching these performances Baker offered Madison the part (then unwritten) of Ani without an audition. “He offered me the role and said, ‘If you would like to do this film I’ll write it for you’,” Madison said.

Midway through Anora, in its most remarkable scene, Ani wrestles with a pair of Russian henchmen who have been sent by Vanya’s father to beat some sense into the young lovers. Ani doesn’t fight them off, however, using the kind of slickly choreographed martial arts moves familiar from the “action femme” antics of Black Widow or Black Doves (think Keira Knightley karate kicks). Instead, she almost literally explodes. She kicks, screams, slaps, punches, writhes and butts. The henchmen are bloodied and clueless. There are snapshots here of Madison’s Once Upon a Time ferocity in the melee, and Baker had clearly seen something vital there that he wanted to channel in Ani. But mostly this ferocity is raw, unfiltered female power, and it’s arguably the main reason Madison has captured the attention of awards juries.

Madison, centre, commands the screen in Anora. Picture: Drew Daniels

It’s the sex, though, that everyone talks about. There’s tons of nudity in Anora and even more sex. Vigorously simulated sex, in long, seemingly unedited sequences, shot in wide, brightly lit, exposing frames. Madison said the sex and nudity didn’t bother her. “Ani’s a sex worker, that’s what she does for a living,” she said. “Her body is her work and nudity, it’s just part of her job. I felt powerful in these moments because she’s in charge of all those interactions. I never felt naked filming those scenes.” She also declined the offer of an intimacy co-ordinator, saying she and Eydelshteyn “decided it would be best to just keep it small. My character is a sex worker, and I had seen Sean’s films and know his dedication to authenticity. I was ready for it. As an actress I approached it as a job”.

Baker has added that the comfort and safety of his actors was paramount, and that before each sex scene he would personally act out each position and sexual action with his wife, Samantha Quan, also the film’s producer. In an era when no sex-themed film, large or small, is complete without a slab of virtue-signalling marketing bilge about the filmmaking team’s lifelong love of intimacy co-ordinators and the power they give to actors, Baker and his cast simply didn’t see the need, stating: “I felt like a third-party voice would distract and I always offer my actors input and approval.”

Yet the allure of Anora is not about the sex or the screwball energy. There’s an extraordinary scene near the end (to describe it would be to spoil the film) that suddenly, ingeniously, abandons the film’s superficial concerns and addresses something far deeper in the central character. It’s an unforeseen tearjerker and gives this audacious drama its emotional weight. It fully redirects the mood of the film and it’s why a best picture Oscar for Anora is looking like the only safe bet in town.

The Times

Anora is in cinemas