JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The R-rated comedy "Anora" is a strip club Cinderella story. Does that sound dicey? Well, it charmed the jury at the Cannes Film Festival into giving it their top prize, the Palme d'Or. And it also seems to have charmed our critic, Bob Mondello.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Anora - or Ani, as she'd rather be called - is 23, living with her sister in Brooklyn and working nights in a Manhattan club their folks would definitely not approve of.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
MIKEY MADISON: (As Anora) Hi. I'm Ani.
(As Anora) You don't have cash. Let's go to the ATM.
(As Anora) Well, we could go chill out in a private room.
MONDELLO: One night, her boss seeks her out.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
VINCENT RADWINSKY: (As Jimmy) I got a kid who wants someone who speaks Russian. Let's go.
MADISON: (As Anora) No. I'm eating my food.
RADWINSKY: (As Jimmy) You're killing me.
MONDELLO: Ani does go along and meets Vanya, a skinny, 21-year-old Russian who's tossing around hundred-dollar bills as if they were Monopoly money.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Without pants, without nothing. And then some...
RADWINSKY: (As Jimmy) Hey, guys.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) That's - OK.
RADWINSKY: (As Jimmy) Hello. This is the beautiful Ani. She's going to take care of everything you need tonight. Ani, make me proud.
MONDELLO: She does. Ani and Vanya get along so well that Vanya invites her to his place - an enormous, art-filled mansion where he wonders if she'd be game to see him exclusively for a week.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
MADISON: (As Anora) Fifteen, cash, up front.
MARK EYDELSHTEYN: (As Vanya Zakharov) Deal.
MONDELLO: A couple of days later, he proposes a longer-term arrangement...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
EYDELSHTEYN: (As Vanya Zakharov) If I get married to an American, I wouldn't have to go back to Russia.
MONDELLO: ...And follows up.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
EYDELSHTEYN: (As Vanya Zakharov) Will you marry me?
MADISON: (As Anora) Seriously?
EYDELSHTEYN: (As Vanya Zakharov) Seriously.
MONDELLO: And she says...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
MADISON: (As Anora) Three karats.
EYDELSHTEYN: (As Vanya Zakharov) What about four?
MONDELLO: Filmmaker Sean Baker makes all of this a whirlwind with Mikey Madison's flirty, sexy, absolutely captivating Ani at its center, a strong, fizzy, confident sex worker who was certainly not expecting to be swept off her feet but is delighted that it's happening.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Like Cinderella.
MADISON: (As Anora) Yes, Cinderella.
MONDELLO: Mark Eydelshteyn's puppyish Vanya, though, hasn't entirely been leveling with her. When he hears that his folks are flying in from Moscow, his bravado crumbles.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
MADISON: (As Anora) Well, you did tell them, right?
MONDELLO: And then heavily accented muscle shows up.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
MADISON: (As Anora) Vanya, should I call 911?
MONDELLO: And Ani feels her fairy tale ending slipping away.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
MADISON: (As Anora) I love my husband.
KARREN KARAGULIAN: (As Toros) You do not know this guy.
MADISON: (As Anora) We are consenting adults.
KARAGULIAN: (As Toros) If you think this is going to be allowed, you're dead wrong.
MADISON: (As Anora) Do not touch me.
MONDELLO: They should not have touched her. One of them ends up with a broken nose. Writer-director Baker has made a specialty of focusing his camera on society's margins. In "Tangerine," he focused his iPhone 5 on some charismatic trans sex workers. In "The Florida Project," he captured the unstable joys of an almost-homeless mother and daughter. And now in "Anora," he plunges again into a world many moviegoers won't know very well - Russian oligarchs, strip clubs, tattoo parlors.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANORA")
LUNA SOFIA MIRANDA: (As Lulu) What is that? Is that a butterfly?
MADISON: (As Anora) Yeah, it's a butterfly.
MIRANDA: (As Lulu) You're so classy.
MADISON: (As Anora) I know.
MIRANDA: (As Lulu) I got dollar signs like a real hoe.
MONDELLO: He does it because messy lives make for tart, sometimes caustic, always surprising comedy. In all of Baker's films, messy lives also make for something more resonant. It's clear early on that the filmmaker's not steering "Anora" toward the storybook ending Ani's hoping for. But because he cares about her as much as audiences will, he's crafted an unexpectedly emotional finale, one that manages to be both heart-tugging and an almost-perfect conclusion to her fractured, feverishly unpredictable fairy tale. I'm Bob Mondello.
(SOUNDBITE OF AYANNA SONG, "GIRLFRIEND") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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