Anyone who’s seen Anora talks about the home-invasion scene.
The 28-minute thriller sequence, a tour de force worthy of Hitchcock, comes about an hour in. Up until then, Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning movie has been an R-rated version of Pretty Woman. “Basically a romantic comedy, maybe a dirty romantic comedy, but a romantic comedy,” says the American indie auteur.
Anora, or Ani, a 23-year-old stripper living in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, played by Mikey Madison, hooks up with the slightly younger 21-year-old Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn, who has been called the Timothée Chalamet of Russia), the son of a Russian oligarch. What starts as a sex worker/client relationship — after a lap dance, Ivan asks if he can have Ani “exclusively” for a week — turns into something more. A whirlwind romance,…