Is Anora a romantic comedy? Well, yes and no. Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or–winning eighth feature about a sex worker and a client who just so happens to be the son of a Russian oligarch has been called an updated version of Pretty Woman — full of cultural misunderstandings between our Russian American heroine Anora, or “Ani,” as she prefers (Mikey Madison), and the various Russian and Armenian affiliates determined to get her to behave and a modern sensibility toward workers’ rights. When Baker received the Palme from this year’s jury president, Greta Gerwig, she said that the film shared the “classic structures of Ernst Lubitsch or Howard Hawks,” calling to mind the often romantic screwball comedies of early 20th-century film.
Though the initial courtship of Ivan, or Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), resembles a Cinderella story, Anora, like all of Baker’s movies, descends into a form of organized chaos. Still: to see New York City in all its frigid glories and frustrations depicted in the background of a drama with both romantic and comedic elements calls to mind a great canon of NYC rom-coms, about which we asked the cast of they have any particular favorites as the premiere on Tuesday in Times Square.
“You know what I love,” said frequent Baker collaborator and Anora co-star Karren Karagulian, who plays the priest Toros, “Sex and the City! I know it’s not exactly a rom-com, but it’s close. It always felt like real New York storytelling.” (“Every day I learn something new about you …” said his co-star and fellow henchman Vache Tovmasyan, who plays Garnick.)
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The HBO sitcom loomed large over the presence of a number of people who worked on the film, even if they’d never seen it. “I haven’t actually watched Sex and the City,” Mark Eydelshteyn said, “but I know it was one of my mother’s favorite TV shows ever. When I was a kid, she’d be watching the show in the kitchen, and if I was in the room, she’d be like, ‘no, no, no, Mark, you can’t watch this show, you can’t talk about this show, you are too small for it!’”
“I’m definitely a Sex and the City girl too,” agreed Madison. “That’s always been my comfort show. I’ve watched those seasons many times over,” though she admitted When Harry Met Sally might be a closer parallel given that Nora Ephron’s film, like Anora, is a road-trip movie.
Though perhaps only Luna Sofía Miranda, who plays Ani’s best friend, Lulu, found the closest New York City rom-com parallel to Anora. “Is GoodFellas a rom-com?” she laughed. “Let’s go with GoodFellas.”