Anora

Directed by Sean Baker, Anora details the chaos that ensues after a stripper (Mikey Madison’s Ani) meets and falls for the spoiled son (Mark Eydelshteyn’s Ivan) of a Russian billionaire. It’s familiar subject matter that’s employed to underwhelming and increasingly interminable effect by Baker, as the filmmaker, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a meandering, padded-out misfire that’s been suffused with a whole host of questionable elements and attributes – with the arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by Baker’s ongoing reliance on scenes and sequences that have clearly (and frustratingly) been heavily improvised. (There is, for example, a seemingly simple interlude, involving the title character’s initial encounter with Russian goons, that drags on for a punishing 28 minutes.) And while Madison admittedly does offer up a stirring, lived-in performance, Baker has stranded the actress within the confines of a woefully undeveloped, one-dimensional figure that becomes less and less sympathetic as time progresses (ie there’s never a point at which it’s clear what Ani’s all about or what she wants out of life). By the time the anticlimactic, nigh endless closing stretch rolls around, Anora has cemented its place as an abject failure that might’ve worked at a much, much shorter running time (ie 139 minutes is absurd, ultimately).

* out of ****