Anora doesn’t merely exist in some nowhere between a comedy that takes itself seriously and a drama that takes itself lightly, but in a very specific space that few directors nowadays can successfully navigate. And no—whilst in hindsight I hardly see how this is possible, not for a moment did I feel the story was stretched. Not during the nearly hour-long montage leading to the boldly belated turning point, nor during the ensuing screwball marathon—maybe just slightly in the final section, as a different film seems to start only to bridge the touching finale and, with it, somehow sealing the message. On the one hand, much of the credit goes to writer, director, and editor Sean Baker, who has a proven knack for keeping the audience engaged and the pace up with minimal narrative elements (I am thinking of Tangerine, another work of sheer bravura in that respect). On the other, to casting director . . . Sean Baker, for his continued trust in Karren Karagulian, an absolute force of nature, and for gathering an ensemble whose performance, both collectively and as individually, is never less than captivating—in the exact etymological sense of the word.

While The Apprentice may not be as unconventional a biopic as intended, it did exceed the expectations that my aversion to the genre, my reluctance to devote two hours to what seemed an irrelevant and unattractive subject, and—however marginally—the negative comments I had intercepted in the ether since its Cannes premiere had fed. On my second attempt after buying and returning the ticket within a few hours on the day of its release, both lead performances made me soon realise it was worth having given it another chance. Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong imbue their roles with a disturbingly convincing sense of humanity without shying away from the most contemptible facets of their characters’ personae, nor yielding to the temptation of rendering farcical events even more so, thereby reducing the film to a redundant political scorn.
Splitting the story in two distinct parts, each identified by an iconic presidency and look—the first following a more structured narrative logic, the second being looser, messier, and slightly out of control, quite metaphorically so indeed—is per se a pretty interesting idea. It’s a shame, though, that technical impossibilities eventually led DP Kasper Tuxen to shoot digitally, faking both 16mm and analog video effects in post to largely perfectible results. A more stoic approach wouldn’t have changed the film, but would have at least added consistency to its aesthetics and artistic value to the project as such.
On another note—minor for most—the portrayal of Andy Warhol left me a little sceptical, but a clumsy young Trump not recognising him at a time when he was well into stardom, felt like a fairly paradoxical yet fitting touch of comedy.