Hyde Park Pick: Anora
Wendy recommends Sean Baker's new film as the film not to miss this week.
Wendy Cook
Sean Baker has been working away in the sector since the early 2000s directing and writing a steady stream of pretty low budget American cinema, full of charisma and a lot of character. It wasn’t until 2015’s Tangerine that Baker finally started to cut through and enjoy some more mainstream success.
For those who haven’t seen Tangerine, the film follows sex-worker Sin-Dee as she tears through Tinseltown on Christmas Eve searching for the source of her broken heart. Tangerine was shot using three iPhone 5S smartphones and something of that technical novelty helped bring the film some wider recognition. However, beyond that point of curiosity the film really cut through, not only on the festival circuit but with audiences more broadly, because of the frantic sincerity of the world Baker was working to capture on film.
That sincerity and high energy is part of why Tangerine has, in the past nine years, become a reliable alternative festive title for many cinemas. It’s also what’s brought audiences time and again to Baker's subsequent films including The Florida Project and Red Rocket.
So, cut to now and it’s November (almost). We’re cold, things are getting dark very quickly. The winter season sniffles are setting in and we’ve spent more time this year than we anticipated talking about the likelihood of a Threads (1984) type scenario. Enter a new Sean Baker film.
Titular character, Anora, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.
High octane with twists of chaos, humour and a version of romance. Anora is the jolt to the system we need to drive us to the end of the year but it’s also still a film within the family of Tangerine and the oh so heartbreakingly tender Florida Project. There’s heart and a lot of humanity here… and we need that at the moment as well.
Anora is showing daily at HPPH from Friday 01 November. You can book tickets here.
