Anora is a throwback to the great American character studies of the 1970s.  Many emotions and filmmaking genres meld into an impressively coherent story.  By turns, this is a searing drama, a sly comedy, and a subtle piece of social commentary.  It’s heartbreaking, redemptive, frustrating, and magnificent.  Writer-editor-director Sean Baker delivers showy cinematic flourishes next to moments of indie minimalism, and somehow they all work.  The fact that Anora can be so many things at once makes it a minor cinematic miracle.

The story has been dismissed as a modern riff on Pretty Woman, but that also shortchanges it.  Anora has a much sharper edge, deeper emotional intensity, and a stronger feel for realism than that 90s classic ever did.  (After all, Richard Gere and Julia Roberts never stop looking like movie stars in a frothy rom-com.) At most, the two films are verrry distant cousins.

Anora (Mikey Madison) works as a stripper at a Brooklyn club.  As the story begins, her nights are pretty typical for the business:  She entices randy businessmen and ding-dong bachelor parties to unload their wallets for lap dances and free drinks.  After her shift, Anora–she prefers “Ani”–stumbles to her Brighton Beach apartment, often as the morning sun peeks over the skyline.  She sleeps all day, only to rinse and repeat the process again.

That routine gets a shakeup when Ani meets Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn).  He’s a shaggy, spoiled son of a Russian oligarch who rolls into Ani’s strip club with wads of cash.  Vanya is 21, but looks and acts even younger.  He gets wasted on any substance he can find, has carefree sex on a whim, and goes on marathon video game benders.  All while recklessly barreling through his father’s millions.

This would seem like an unlikely setup for romance, but here we are:  Ani and Vanya hit it off, probably because of their amiable personalities and hedonistic party schedules.  After a night of debauchery, Vanya becomes smitten enough to make a Pretty Woman offer:  Could Ani become his personal escort for the next week, all for an exorbitant amount of cash?  She simply can’t refuse.

With that, Vanya forms an entourage and charters a private jet to Vegas.  What follows is a blur of Dionysian indulgence, in which Ani and Vanya engage in sex and drugs with reckless abandon.  Of course, Vegas functions as an incubator for epically bad decisions, and Vanya hatches a doozy:  What if they got married?  This would give him a green card, and give their infatuation the chance to grow into something more.  After a brief discussion, the couple heads to nearest chapel and seals the deal.

At this point, Anora arrives at a storytelling fork in the road.  Baker could steer this thing down several paths, with varying chances of success:  This movie could turn into a slow-burning romance, a dry comedy, or a ferociously dramatic character study.  Incredibly, Baker spends some time on all three roads, before settling in with the third option.  The midpoint of Anora is an intense, tragicomic experience, as Ani and Vanya’s bubble world bursts.

Somehow, Baker delivers an experience that somehow feels both unpredictable and inevitable.  Anora‘s final act made me think of Five Easy Pieces, the classic 1970 drama with Jack Nicholson.  That film ended on an enigmatic note, baffling audiences accustomed to tidy, pleasant conclusions.  In Piece‘s final scene, Nicholson’s character behaved exactly how he would have in real life. With Anora, Baker exhibits the same bravery:  Ani and Vanya might break your heart, but their actions fit their characters.  This film ends on with similar ambivalence, and that’s part of its glory.

Another key piece of Anora‘s acclaim lies its performances.  Madison slips so comfortably into the role of Anora, she makes it look deceptively easy.  On the surface, her Anora is feisty and resilient, with her thick Brooklyn accent acting like a layer of armor.  Below those defenses, Ani is achingly vulnerable and naive.  She quickly falls for Vanya’s frustrating likability and glimmers of potential. Eydelshteyn plays Vanya as a fragile, petulant man-child, forever caught in a destructive spiral.  He has moments of kindness and generosity, but these are often swept away in a whirlpool of abject indulgence.

Anora’s third key player is Yura Borisov.  He is Igor, a young goon sent by Vanya’s parents to investigate the rumored nuptials.  Unlike the other henchmen in Vanya’s orbit, Igor shows genuine empathy toward Ani.  Borisov brings a fragile humanity to what is usually a clichéd role.

Add all that up, and you’ve got a gripping cinematic experience.  Some viewers might be nonplussed at Anora‘s ambiguous ending.  Others might find it overlong for such an intimate story.  I would argue that Baker takes extra time to let us really know these characters.  By the conclusion, there is beauty in its bittersweetness.  This is one of the best films of the year.

139 min.  R.  On demand.