TIn the end, the Cannes Film Festival went to a film about love, a love story that completely subverts the notion of a Cinderella romance while at the same time passionately believing in it in a mysterious and delicate way, winning the Palme d’Or.
Sean Baker’s Anora stars Mikey Madison in a brilliant performance as Ani (short for Anora), a New York erotic dancer and escort who enters into an exclusive commercial relationship with Ivan, the prodigal son of a Russian oligarch, played by Mark Eidelstein.
Her client falls madly in love with the smart and attractive Ani, proposes marriage in Las Vegas, gets engaged in an all-night wedding, and then suffers a long, gruesome retribution from her Russian parents, who dispatch a couple of hapless, almost Pinterest-esque thugs to somehow sort out the mess and blackmail/pay off Ani to have the marriage annulled and thus her existence annulled.
Anora is nothing without the intelligence and integrity of Mikey Madison. Her Ani is neither cynical nor greedy. She doesn’t try to trap Ivan, choosing to trust his devotion and that this marriage will work. She understands that he brings financial capital and she brings glamour capital. But that’s the way it is, and although she loves him, she doesn’t see what we can see – the terrible inevitability of Ivan’s immaturity and cowardice, the slow-motion car crash of his impending betrayal.
Ani remains an idealist and romantic through thick and thin, overcoming challenges of humiliation and violence. Sean Baker has taken a very unique and original approach to sex work in his previous films, Tangerine and Red Rocket, but Anora is his best work to date.
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At Cannes, many will have been deeply disappointed that The Sacred Fig Seed, an allegory of theocracy and misogyny by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, who is currently a fugitive after serving a prison sentence in his home country, did not win the Palme. I think it deserved more than a special screenplay award (or even an actual screenplay award). Indeed, it was a brilliantly written film that starts as a dark and sensitive political drama, then introduces paranoia and oppression, especially in an extraordinary scene where the judge’s wife and daughter are brought in blindfolded for an informal interrogation. It then climaxes with a fantastic, symbolic shootout, the final scene of which festival director Thierry Frémaux likened to the work of Anthony Mann.
I had predicted (though was a bit skeptical) that Jacques Audiard’s gangster transgender musical Emilia Pérez would win the Palme, but the jury prize, plus the four-way split for best actress, meant his film was well-rewarded.
It’s very interesting to see this acting award shared by Adriana Paz, Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana and transgender star Carla Sofia Gascón. Did Greta Gerwig’s jury consider simply and boldly giving the award to Carla Sofia Gascón, but then think that giving a joint award to all the top female cast members would settle the bet and send a better message about cisgender and transgender solidarity?
Payal Kapadia’s Indian drama All We Imagine As Light was my favourite film in competition at Cannes and her first feature-length work of fiction winning the Grand Prix is a fantastic achievement. The film about the lives of three Mumbai nurses blends realist drama with metaphysical mystery and does so with great poise and conviction. Comparisons to Satyajit Ray are cliché but they’re justified here.
The Best Director award to Miguel Gomes was also a tough choice from the jury. A unique creative force in world cinema, he has created a complex, fascinating and seductive film with The Grand Tour, a Somerset Maugham-esque tale of a British colonial officer in Burma during the First World War who is hesitant to marry and flees across Asia, pursued by his terrifying fiancé. The film also has a metatextual element in the ubiquitous documentary-style contemporary scene.
The Substance, the winner of the Best Original Screenplay award, directed by Coralie Farge, is a raucous yet fun body horror satire starring Demi Moore that blew the festival away. It’s no wonder it won an award. There were dark rumors circulating that the film’s producers begged Farge to cut the film’s running time by 20 minutes, and she arrogantly declared, “No! I’m a French filmmaker!” but today her innocence has been vindicated.
“A star is born” is a term that should be used sparingly, but it suits the great Jesse Plemons, who won Best Actor for his Yorgos Lanthimos collaboration “Kinds of Kindness,” and whose calm and vulnerability have made him the quintessential everyman actor in a Hollywood tradition dating back to John C. Reilly and Ernest Borgnine.
While I have mixed feelings about why the great Rasoulof didn’t get more for his work, Anora brought energy, excitement, romance and a unique, mysterious sense of euphoria to Cannes.
