How to Lose a Russian Heir in Less Than a Day

After Adrien Brody finally concluded his obnoxiously long Oscars acceptance speech, televisions across America were blissfully bathed in the exuberant glow of Mikey Madison. Wearing a pink and black archival Dior dress, the 25 year-old actress cradled a gleaming statuette for her performance in Anora (2024). 

Madison’s best actress award was one of four won by Anora, the tragic screwball comedy that earned writer and director Sean Baker his first Oscars. Baker is known for his emotionally charged movies that center on the sex worker and escort industry, such as Tangerine (2015) and Red Rocket (2021); Anora is no different. 

The film follows its titular character, a young stripper who goes by Ani and lives in Brighton Beach. Ani becomes entangled with Russian heir Ivan (Alex Eydelshteyn), one of her clients; the two of them marry on a whim in Las Vegas, much to the chagrin of Ivan’s parents (Darya Ekamasova, Aleksey Serebryakov). The subsequent cat and mouse game Anora becomes ensnared in with Ivan, his parents, his godfather (Armenian priest Toros, played by Karren Karagulian), and Garnik and Igor (Vache Tovmasyan, and Yura Borisov)—the family’s Armenian and Russian goons, respectively—takes her on a heady escapade crisscrossing the nation, beginning in wintry Brooklyn, flying to Las Vegas, and returning to Brooklyn for the film’s sobering ending. 

Anora begins in the dim red-lens flare of a strip club, where Ani slides and melts across the big screen, red tinsel crackling through her long black hair. This is where she meets Ivan, who seems like any number of early-20-somethings frequently spotted on the downtown C train. Eydelshteyn casually plays him as a lanky young adult visiting New York for a fun time, taking frequent pulls of his vape and emitting jittery peals of laughter. 

Ivan keeps hiring Anora for her services, eventually paying to take her with him and his friends to Las Vegas, where Ivan and Ani have a shotgun wedding. The marriage seems peaceful—Ani leaves her stripping job to lounge around in baggy T-shirts and recline on Ivan while he plays video games, and the two of them have passionate sex in almost every place possible. Their chemistry is strongest here—the brief domesticity they enjoy together before Toros learns of Ivan’s wife. Toros sprints out of the christening he’s officiating and sends Garnik and Igor to kidnap Ivan and Anora with the hope that they’ll annul their marriage. 

It’s precisely at this point that Anora transitions from an offbeat rom-com to a screwball comedy reminiscent of Bringing Up Baby (1938)—if Baby had been swapped for an immature drunken Russian adolescent, that is.

The two goons break into Ivan’s manse, and Baker reveals just how much of an impetuous man-child Ivan is. After trying and failing to push Garnik and Igor out the front door, Ivan literally runs from his problems, leaving Ani alone to fend for herself. The next chunk of the movie consists of Ani attacking Igor and Garnik, shrieking wildly and kicking everything in sight. (These scenes are like if Cary Grant did his famous pratfalls but directed by Scorcese.) 

For this alone, Mikey Madison deserves her Oscar; she exhibits not only tremendous talent in her physical comedy but also manages to come off as both enormously strong and increasingly insecure. As the chase develops, Ani’s faith in Ivan begins to falter, but she dares not show it to Toros, Garnik, and Igor. Mikey Madison illustrates to the audience Ani’s stoic exterior as well as her crumbling interior. 

As Anora deflates, Igor becomes more and more sympathetic. He and Anora end the movie together, in front of Ani’s house; their feelings for each other are murky, confused, and probably unreciprocated. Towards the film’s conclusion, Anora declares that Igor has “rape eyes” when he tries to flirt with her. Compared to Ani’s past relationships, this one seems the healthiest. 

Despite appearing in all but one or two scenes in the 139-minute-long movie, Ani is relatively unknown. She exists in a liminal downtown Brooklyn, surrounded by a hazy cloud of strawberry vape smoke—her profession is one where her clients don’t know the details of her life, and this is mirrored in the audience’s perception of her. Baker doesn’t want you to know what has happened or will happen, because Anora is about immediacy and not necessarily resolution. It teeters on still-drunk legs between neon-haloed excitement and aching despair.