A sort of narrative-cinema cultural anthropologist, Sean Baker made several interesting if variable features probing different milieus in his native New Jersey and NYC stomping grounds before 2015’s Tangerine, which had everyone sitting up to take notice. Improbably shot on iPhones, it was a great-looking, electrically charged peek into a few high-drama hours in the lives of trans sex workers on a Christmas Eve on the dingier side of the place (rather than the industry or idea) called Hollywood.
Two years later he topped that with The Florida Project, an equally eye-opening ensemble fiction set in another economic underside to a supposed realization hot spot for the “American dream.” It also seemed organically born of its locations and (mostly) nonprofessional actors, to an effect that was equally manic and arresting, but also in the end more big-heartedly moving.
After that, Red Rocket seemed a bit of a backstep—again astutely observed in a distinct downscale setting (here smalltown Texas) with its initially attention-grabbing story of porn has-been (Simon Rex) who thinks he might’ve found a ticket back into that biz via a 17-year-old donut counter minder (Suzanna Son). But the material was thin, especially stretched out to 128 minutes.
I’ll admit my first reaction to Baker’s new Anora was “What…this again?,” as the opening shot is a slo-mo pan across a line of lap dancers grinding booty into customers’ faces (and our own) at a busy, glossy Brooklyn strip club. Beyond Rocket and Tangerine, the writer-director had already made yet a third movie involving sex work (2012’s Starlet)—and let’s face it, after a certain point you begin to wonder if a filmmaker is actually illuminating the world of sexuality as commerce, or simply ogling it like so many before him.
Ani (Mikey Madison) is a hardbodied 23-year-old temperamentally suited to her job, in that she has no qualms hustling strangers for money, and simply shrugs off those who aren’t buying. The fleeting glimpse we catch of her home life (shared with a quarrelsome sister and the latter’s boyfriend) is unpleasant; it’s easy to guess there’s been a lot of unpleasantness in Ari’s life, gifting her nerves of steel and a hard shell. Annoyed at having a smoke break interrupted by a manager’s insistence she meet a rich Russian, she’s nonetheless pleased to find that Vanya aka Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) is young—probably younger than the “21” he claims—dumb, very appreciative, and with a fat wallet.
He invites her to a subsequent party at his home, which is all chrome, leather, and glass, exuding the impersonal tastes of people who have no “taste” beyond the desire to make their wealth as conspicuous as possible. Vanya may be an oligarch’s son, but he’s still really just an inexperienced boy, and Ani easily wows him as the best girl he’s ever “had.” He pays her $15,000 to be his “girlfriend” for a week, during which they and his posse of other Russian emigre youth impulsively fly to Las Vegas. (They stay in a luxury hotel suite whose decor is exactly like his home’s.)
Vanya is a manchild, glued to video games whenever he’s not drinking, drugging or fucking. But he likes her, and she likes him—possibly even beyond simply liking the cash he showers her with, or the lifestyle he’s swept her up into. When he impulsively proposes they get married, it may not be mere cold calculation on her part to say yes. This is one transactional relationship that might actually last, boosting her waaay up the economic ladder via a benefactor whose un-house-trained-puppy nature she can certainly tolerate, maybe even love. She has surely experienced worse.
No doubt about it, these people are obnoxious—trashy high rollers and their eye candy. They’re loud, inebriate, quick to yell, deep pockets allowing them to get away with pretty much anything. But the almost moronically short-attention-spanned Vanya does answer to a higher power. That would be his parents, for the moment safely back in Russia tending their various businesses. He has been allowed to play freely here so he is out of their hair, and theoretically to sow wild oats so one day he is fit for grownup responsibilities. There are sober adult minders (notably those played by Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan) on the periphery of his party scene, making sure he doesn’t do anything too stupid.
Then he does: He gets married, and to (as all the older Russians seem to regard her) a “prostitute.” Entertainingly off-putting as it is to watch this over-funded, intellectually void crowd cavort for an hour, there’s a nervous undercurrent running beneath their hijinks. Plucky, pushy Ani isn’t the most sympathetic heroine—you’d rue fate if caught within earshot of her shrill gob. But we don’t want her killed, or maimed, or whatever happens to upstarts who inconvenience Russian oligarchs. Is Anora headed somewhere very ugly?
The rough midpoint when that question reaches crisis point is actually when Baker’s latest goes from being MTV Presents Spring Break, Putin Edition—lively, lurid excess that’s more than a little gross—to something great. It’s a switch that flips as soon as the bad news reaches Mr. and Mrs. Zakharov (smirking Aleksei Serebryakov, a scarifyingly imperious Darya Ekamasova) in Moscow, putting them on the next plane to Newark. This in turn throws Vanya into such a panic, he’s flown out the door to hide somewhere, anywhere. His bride is left behind, initially in violent resistance to the family goons (a sequence of peerless decor-destroying slapstick), then reluctantly cooperating with them as they realize they must find Boy Wonder before the dreaded parental units land.
Anora’s second half is hilarious, nuanced, even poignant—we are made to feel for characters who hitherto had seemed only worth crossing the street to avoid. Baker invariably gets excellent performances from his cast, but while former TV teen (in the series Better Things) Madison has been tipped as the breakout, everyone is first rate. And arguably the real revelation is Borisov, a Russian movie star whose close-mouthed, skinheaded tough guy Igor turns out to be perhaps the only person here with a conscience, or interests beyond self-interest. This busy, fireworks-driven movie full of garish behavior and personalities has the appeal of a witnessed trainwreck for a while, but the surprising soulfulness it achieves at the fadeout rests largely on Borisov’s shoulders. Anora opens in Bay Area theaters Fri/25.
It’s not the only awards-magnet feature opening this weekend. Likely to be more to the Academy’s taste—it’s got more recognizable faces and a whole lot less grindage—is Conclave, the latest from German director Edward Berger of the excellent All Quiet on the Western Front remake two years ago. This is an about-face from that combat epic, a dialogue-driven chamber piece of Vatican intrigue. But while far more conventional in tone and content than Anora, it’s an equally accomplished, satisfying piece of work.
Based on a novel by Robert Harris (of Fatherland), though you might assume stage roots instead, this is about the power struggle that ensues after a modern pope dies. Ralph Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, a loyal flunky who is tasked with convening and running the closed-door summit at which a successor is chosen. He’s not interested in that position himself, though as others scheme to advance themselves, he gets accused of being so. His primary confidante/ally is Bellini (Stanley Tucci), a progressive-minded American at greatest odds with the reactionary Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), an Italian who’d happily steer the church back to the 15th century if he could.
Others jostling for votes include another, more Machiavellian Yank (John Lithgow), a much-liked Nigerian (Lucian Msamati), and wild cards like a younger Mexican priest (Carlos Diehz). The latter has served almost exclusively in war zones, those assignments (most recently Kabul) so secretive the other cardinals didn’t know of his existence until now. Of course the rigid rules of this process, and the Vatican in general, exclude women beyond serving at mealtimes and such. Nonetheless, there is eventually cause for a couple nuns to play significant roles in the narrative, including a senior one played with fuming authority by Isabella Rossellini.
This peek behind the highest-ranking curtains of Catholicism inevitably fascinates for its bureaucratic intricacies alone, but Harris and adaptor Peter Vaughan spring a lot of juicy twists. Maybe one too many—the last struck me as an overreach, forcing additional thorny issues into a story that had so gracefully borne discussion of so many already. It’s the sole point at which an ingenious scenario feels like it’s blatantly checking hot topics off a list.
Nonetheless, Conclave is rich in suspense, character and chess-playing intricacy, affording the kind of elevated costume-drama entertainment that often feels more theatrical than Berger manages. (It’s also a reminder than anything involving the Vatican involves “costumes,” even if set in the present day. Indeed, the only physical signs of modernity are the cell phones participants must surrender upon arrival.)
We immediately know we’re in good hands, largely because the film promptly turns us over to Fiennes—an actor endlessly absorbing in silent close-up, whose eyes provide windows to the soul and whose thought processes are manifest on his expressive face. He has an extraordinary range (not even taking into account his stage work), but this is possibly his most empathetic role since The Constant Gardener two decades ago. It’s an equally beautiful performance. Oscars don’t typically go to this kind of quiet, watchful turn that can be a movie’s binding factor. But why shouldn’t they? Conclave also opens in Bay Area theaters Fri/25.
Not quite in the class of the above films but still well worth seeing is The Line, Ethan Berger’s first feature. Co-written with Alex Russek, it’s a strong drama-cum-thriller with Alex Wolff as Tom, a scholarship student determined to transcend his humble background at a 2014 southern university. In such a setting, the best way to do that is via the Greek system, natch. So he’s joined a frat whose prior violations of campus conduct codes have won them a strict “no more hazing” decree. Yeah, right—what the Dean’s office doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
It’s certainly going to hurt some fresh pledges, though. Of course Rush Week’s booze-coke-and-testosterone-fueled hijinks end up going very far awry for one such unfortunate. Is Tom really so desperate to fit in that he’ll help cover up a serious crime? Among the angels and devils whispering advice on his shoulders are figures played by Lewis Pullman, Halle Bailey, Austin Abrams, the late Angus Cloud, Scoot McNairy, Denise Richards, Cheri Oteri and John Malkovich—the latter few as variably problematic parental figures.
This sort of thing has been done before. But despite its melodramatic elements, The Line feels like a more credibly drawn depiction/indictment than most of a system that perpetuates so much our society’s entrenched inequities—racial, patriarchal, economic and nepotistic. It’s also got some real psychological depth and moral complexity, which Wolff & co. handle cannily, as well as a punchy, confident, musically driven directorial style. At presstime the film was booked to open this Fri/25 in the Bay Area just at Santa Clara’s AMC Mercado 20.
