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Rating: 4.75 out of 5
Have you ever lived the high life for a quick second? I’m talking about experiencing a lavish lifestyle where you are treated like a queen or king. Then the next day you must go back to reality, and it majorly sucks ass. I know this feeling. I listened to Steve Harvey back in the day, and the one thing he said to do is fly first class for an international trip. He said it would change your world and that you would never want to go back to the back of the plane. I flew first class on a trip from LAX to Paris. Flew that La Première on Air France. O.M.G was that shit AWESOME. The seats, food, and how you are treated are a game-changer. You never want to go to the back of the plane again. Now, if I have an international trip, I refuse to sit in the back of the plane. I’ll sit in business class, but fuck that back in the plane shit.
The reason I brought all of this up is that I recently watched Anora. GOD DAMN was Mikey Madison freakin sexy, hot, and I wasn’t expecting her to shake that ass like that. You know where I am about to go with this, but before that, Anora is a straight-up awesome and different film where one goes from stripping to living the freakin high life until they come crashing down back to reality. Shit is real, and you could feel what home girl was going through.
Anora is written, directed, produced, and edited by Sean Baker. Homeboy did MAJOR work in this film, and he did it all for the grand total of $6 mill. Shows that you don’t need a big budget to produce quality and fantastic work. The film revolves around Anora “Ani” Mikheeva, played by the BEAUTIFUL Mikey Madison. Ani is a young, brash, and outspoken stripper living in Brighton Beach. She has a minor one-up on the other girls as she is the only Russian-speaking stripper at the upscale Manhattan strip joint where she works. One day, her life changes when her boss introduces her to Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov, played by Mark Eydelshteyn. Vanya is a little shit, as he is the spoiled and doesn’t give a fuck son of wealthy Russian oligarch Nikolai Zakharov. Vanya is in the U.S. to study, but homeboy doesn’t have time for that. He would rather party, play video games, have sex, and do drugs.
Vanya hires Ani to pretty much have sex and smoke weed with. Vanya is a two-pump chump, but when your parents are loaded, no one cares how long you can last in bed. Vanya even goes so far as to offer k Ani $15k to stay with him for a week and pose as his girlfriend. $15k?!?!?! I would be a girl’s boyfriend for that much. This week leads to Vanya taking a trip with Ani to Vegas and then getting married. This starts a freakin crazy time to test that love between the pair, with Ani wanting to escape the world of stripping and Vanya with the goal of escaping his parents, getting a green card, and avoiding returning to Russia to work for his strict parents.
I need to give MAJOR props to Sean Baker. Mr. Baker, you developed and made a fantastic film. Hands down, one of the best and original films I have seen in a long time. Baker drew you in with the start of the film by showing topless women in a strip club until it landed on Ani. What is great about the first half is that Baker takes the old tale of a prince coming to take you away from the life you have. Baker introduces Vanya, who is a little shit, but his family has unimaginable wealth. You see the developing relationship between Vanya and Ani, but you know the shit will not last. Ani “cares” for Vanya, but she cares more about the lifestyle he lives and the world she wants to be part of. I wouldn’t call Ani a gold digger, but she is playing the game by having a ton of sex with Vanya, but not really helping him be a better person. The two are no older than 25. They are still kids. The first half shows the pair partying, living it up, and doing anything and everything they ever wanted. A dream that all of us would love to have.
The second half of the film is equally amazing after the pair gets married. This is when shit hits the fan, and Vanya’s parents find out, and the dream crumbles. First, you can see that Vanya is afraid of his parents because he avoids their calls and those of his godfather. Don’t blame the man because he fucked up. You see the fantasy crash as Vanya throws up the deuces and disappears. At the same time, he leaves Ani to handle everything when Vanya’s godfather comes looking for him. As they drive around NYC to look for him, things continue to spiral out of control when they learn that Vanya’s parents are flying to the States to handle it and bring Vanya’s punk ass home. You could see the stress on Ani’s face, looking for her “husband,” only to find him completely wasted and getting a dance from her rival. When Vanya’s parents show up, you think his father would be the intense one, but it’s his mom who is terrifying. Her tone and aura are malicious, but when she makes that little devious smile when she knows she won the game, you just can’t stand her.
The ending is heartbreaking, but you could see it coming a mile away. There wasn’t a chance in hell that Vanya’s parents were going to let him marry a stripper. When Ani loses everything and has to return to her world, she tries to kiss one of Vanya’s parents’ workers, who is under their thumb. Ani breaks down when she really realizes that it’s over. I can feel for her because anyone who has tasted the rich life doesn’t want to go back to what they were. They don’t want to leave that mountain top and have to go back to the bottom.
For the performances, Mikey Madison did the fucking thing. GOD DAMN. You could really tell that Madison prepared for this role by spending many hours with strippers. That scene where she was shaking her ass before she got banged was mwah. Play that A$AP Rocky featuring Schoolboy Q – Electric Body! “SHAKE THAT ASS, GIRL, MAKE THAT COOCHIE WET!!” Madison brought that fierceness of a girl living in NYC as she told it how it was and didn’t give a shit. Madison showed Ani having a caring side, but also a side that she wants that money and wants that lifestyle. I must applaud her for the performance because I wasn’t expecting this, and I could watch her shake that ass many times over.
Anora is a fantastic film that shows what happens when someone is thrust into a world of wealth, only for it to be gone in seconds. Baker did an amazing job doing everything under the sun to make this movie, and he deserves all the credit and then some. It is a highly enjoyable film. The film couldn’t have been this good without Mikey Madison’s performance. She brought her A-game, and it was a joy to watch. I was drooling all over her because she was that amazing and beautiful. Next time you fly first class, think of this film because it will end in a second.
