ANORA (Neon – Oct. 17): Sean Baker has been making quirky, captivating character studies for some time now, starting with Starlet in 2012 and following it with Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket. The rollicking Anora, which won the Palme D’Or at Cannes and will be aggressively pushed by Neon for awards, seems like it may be his commercial breakthrough. Like his other films, Anora has its own unique tone, describable perhaps as Pretty Woman meets Uncut Gems meets Bringing Up Baby. The title character (a fabulous Mikey Madison) works in a strip-club and does some independent sex work on the side. She grew up in a household that spoke Russian, so when Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Moscow oligarch, comes into the club, she’s summoned to be his companion for the evening. The night becomes a week, and Anora suddenly finds herself living the lifestyle of a tycoon (or at least a tycoon’s son), ensconced in Ivan’s huge family compound and taking a private jet with friends for a jaunt to Las Vegas. There, she and Ivan have an impetuous wedding–and that’s when things get complicated. Reality catches up to Anora, who is soon launched on a hectic, screwball journey through Coney Island and Manhattan with Ivan’s father’s local agent Toros (Karren Karagulian) and his henchmen Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov). Anora becomes hilarious, and then dramatic, and then something else again, and finally unexpectedly moving. Baker is fully aware of the darkness lurking around the story’s wisecracks and comic set-pieces, but it never keeps him from embracing the characters’ joy. He loves all his weird defective people (and the actors who play them), in a wholehearted way that makes comparisons to Renoir and Jonathan Demme wholly sensible. Madison’s presence here is the definition of star-making, but even actors who appear in a single scene get a chance to shine. Baker edited the film itself, and despite a 138-minute runtime, Anora is light on its feet, its many tones masterfully modulated. Drew Daniels (shooting on film) makes the city look gritty and fanciful at once, and special praise is due to the sound department–even though much of Anora is set in loud clubs and parties, the dialogue is never buried by the music and background noise. Baker has made a movie that feels like a party, and invited all of us to attend.
ALL OF YOU (no distrib): William Bridges’s film has an unusual lineage. Bridges and Brett Goldstein co-created the 2020 AMC series Soulmates, an anthology that started with the premise that in the near future, a test had been invented that allowed the participants to have their true love identified. The short-lived series poked at the many ways having that knowledge could go sideways, and this feature, also written by Bridges and Goldstein, is sort of a spin-off. Here Laura (Imogen Poots) goes for the test, accompanied by her platonic best friend friend Simon (Goldstein), and her soulmate is revealed to be Lukas (Steven Cree). Lukas is a very nice guy, and Laura marries and has a daughter with him, but in the ways of romantic movies since time immemorial, he’s just a little bit dullish. Simon, who adamantly refuses to take the test, meanwhile dates others, but eventually has to face up to the fact that he’s in love with Laura, and as it turns out she feels the same way. At that point All of You just becomes a romantic drama about adultery, as Simon and Laura contrive trips out of London to have some torrid time together, because Laura won’t leave Lukas–the very idea of her getting a divorce is treated with the kind of horror that you’d think went out of style in the era of Brief Encounter circa 1945. Even though Poots and Goldstein have the necessary charm and chemistry with each other, All of You becomes tiresome as the lovers swear that they’re breaking up repeatedly only to find themselves in each other’s arms again. The most interesting thing about the script becomes its tendency to take time jumps without announcing them, and also not providing the usual helpful signs (haircuts, signs of aging) that these stories usually provide, so the audience is constantly playing a bit of catch-up. It’s not enough to make All of You a wholly satisfying drama.
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