In the Flesh: Anora

Was there a funnier scene in film last year than Anora (Mikey Madison) fighting like an irate rattlesnake against three full-grown men as they try to manhandle, browbeat, and threaten her into agreeing to get an annulment in her husband’s parents’ living room? If there was, I didn’t see it. In fact the entire comedy of errors that begins at the mansion of Vanya’s oligarch parents (Mark Eydelshteyn) and ends at HQ, the strip joint where Anora used to work, is a masterpiece of Coen-esque disaster comedy. None of it would work without Toros (Karren Karagulian), the put-upon Armenian handler employed by Vanya’s parents to break up the marriage between Vanya and Anora. Toros, an Armenian Orthodox priest by day, literally runs out on the baby he’s in the middle of baptizing in order to deal with the situation. He’s like a regular guy trapped in a hundred intersecting Mr. Bean sketches that just won’t end, hapless and constantly out of his depth, yelling at everyone as much out of frustrated confusion as any desire to get things done. It’s magnificent.

The expression on Karagulian’s face when his inebriated brother interrupts Vanya and his disgusting parents in an ill-considered bid to compliment them is a thing of beauty, the look of a father watching a beloved but moronic child walk straight toward a crocodile. That he immediately commits the same error in an attempt to grovel is almost unbearably funny. Beautifully shot and impeccably written, Anora may tell a fairly conventional story, but it does so with effortless confidence. Its final act dances deftly between comedy and drama without its characters ever once seeming less than fully human. The slapstick and constantly escalating outrage of the search for Vanya pivots neatly into a confrontation between the young heir and his new wife that feels like getting kicked in the stomach. After enduring endless humiliation and brutal manhandling by his parents’ goons, Anora has to stand there while the man she loves reveals himself to be the lowest, most contemptible species of rich person, so devoid of humanity he calls her “stupid” when she asks if they’re going to get a divorce.

Eydelshteyn’s limp, apathetic immaturity plays perfectly off of Mikey Madison’s brassy and confrontational Brooklyn townie affect. The two have a breezy, effortless chemistry that makes it so much worse when it becomes apparent Vanya is spineless and uncaring, a parasite attached to his monstrous parents. Played by Aleksei Serebryakov and Darya Ekamasova, the oligarchs make a feast out of their brief screen time, just as dead-eyed, spoiled, and hateful as their offspring but with drive and confidence backing up their immense economic power. The scene in which Galina (Ekamasova) threatens to destroy not just Anora but all her friends and family is a wonderful little showcase for the Russian actress, who manages to convey reckless, uninhibited sadism, boundless entitlement, and intense self-loathing all in the space of forty seconds. Anora is a surprisingly somber and thoughtful but uproariously funny delight.