At no point is there any doubt about what’s going to happen in Sean Baker’s Anora, and yet you can’t look away because it’s just so damned entertaining. Shot on 35mm, it’s got style oozing out of every frame, but it never draws attention to itself in the wrong way. Every sequence is pushed almost to its breaking point and then Baker shifts gears at the last possible second. 

Structurally, it’s very neat. Unlike Baker’s The Florida Project, which was largely shapeless until the last minute climax and a tacked-on ending, Anora succeeds with a three-act structure. The first act is soaked in champagne and rap, so quickly cut it’s almost all a montage; it’s the fastest-paced and probably shortest act and it’s just a wee bit repetitive (Baker is so good at filming debauchery, he tricked me into thinking it was awesome. That sentiment evaporated quickly). I do think it moved to act 2 at the latest possible point, just as the “Cinderella” story is plateauing from lack of conflict, and then the cast of characters swells, and the actors really get to flex their muscles in long takes of arguments and physical altercations.

On top of being gripping at every moment, it’s also frequently witty and hilarious. Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan have incredible comedic timing. Mark Eidelstein (dubbed the “Russian Timothee Chalamet” by the media) is almost a cartoon character as Vanya/Ivan, the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch. Take that as you will, but his portrayal is, I’m afraid, 100% accurate.

The final act is the saddest and least surprising but never once drags or feels obvious. The astute viewer will notice that the ending scene has dark parallels with the film’s opening.

While the emotional heart of the third act may be Yuriy Borsanov’s Igor, Baker really wants the movie to belong to Mikey Madison’s performance as Anora/Annie, and she’s quite successful with the material she’s given, demonstrating a comedic and emotional range that lands like a dagger to the heart in the film’s closing. She did, evidently, learn to dance for this film, spent time in the communities of strippers and sex workers, and even did her own stunts. Unfortunately, she also attempts an embarrassingly inconsistent Brooklyn accent that sounds like she studied Marisa Tomei’s performance in My Cousin Vinny but only learned half the words.

Now, while the script’s quips land well, I didn’t find it nearly as funny as everyone else did at my screening – in fact, it’s rather infuriating, because Anora is the story of how the world belongs to the ultra wealthy, and the rest of us are just here to  be their plaything or clean up the mess. A minor inconvenience for rich people could be the most dramatic and devastating event in the life of a poor young woman. Throughout each scene, Baker’s camera lingers on service workers: beleaguered servants who clean up after Ivan’s parties, the blind owner of a candy shop, the gaggle of strippers filling out the staff at HQ, an irate tow truck driver who’s just doing his job. All helpless before a familial entity that has so much money, consequences do not exist for them. I left the film feeling probably exactly the way Baker wanted me to, steaming mad at the 1% and less hopeful than I’ve ever been that the downtrodden among us can have any hope at all.