Fantastic Fest 2024 is well underway and I had a chance to catch two more films screening there, Sean Baker’s Anora and Saturday Night, based on the beginnings of Saturday Night Live. Check out what I thought below!
Anora: A slice of life film with a powerful message
The Florida project is one of the best slice-of-life pictures in a long time. Filmmaker Sean Baker had a way of making such a profound statement about poverty in the backdrop of a hotel extended stay next to Disney World. Those paying attention might know his new movie Anora is getting all the raves since winning the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes.
Based on the advertisements and the buzz surrounding the film, Sean Baker’s latest is destined to be one of those offerings at this year’s Fantastic Fest that will be in awards conversations for months to come. After seeing the movie for myself, I can confirm this.
The film stars Mikey Madison as Anora (or Ani as she prefers), a stripper and escort worker with a soft expression but a fierce mouth. Throughout the first moments of Anora, we gather a sense of her daily life, from living in the slums to making men feel like they mean everything to her for a price. The film then changes gears as we meet Ivan (nicknamed Vanya, played by Mark Eidelshtein), a free-spirited Russian rich kid who takes a liking to Ani. Ivan has all the money one can ask for, and he throws it to the wind at everything to make Anora be with him. Like Succession, all the main characters seem to have shallow personalities, yet for whatever reason, one cannot help but feel enthralled by their experiences.
For most of the first half, the film has tremendous energy, throwing us into a film with rampant party energy. Then, once Ivan and Anora make the impulsive decision to marry each other, it becomes borderline slapstick comedy, with Ivan’s family trying to annul the marriage, and Anora making everyone’s life a living hell through the entire unfortunate process.
Mikey Madison owns this movie from the inside out, giving one of the most smoldering and fearless performances of 2024. She gives a hundred percent to everything in this film and does not hold back. While Eidelshtein is great in Ivan’s role, Yura Borisov quietly steals the show as Igor. Borisov plays one of the henchmen sent to fix the situation, and his approach is tender throughout. He never feels dangerous, even when he is forced to take control of matters. And without giving too much away, there’s a dynamic with his character that quietly builds to an emotional payoff.
Overall, Anora features bold, shameless, and authentic performances, especially by Mikey Madison. It is one of the most daring and entertaining experiences I’ve had all year. There are probably some comparisons to Pretty Woman because of the escort subplot, but it’s hard to imagine Julia Roberts giving a performance this unapologetically raw. Filmmaker Sean Baker has done it once again, delivering a powerful film highlighting an unseen portion of the population with empathy and humor.
Saturday Night: exploring the beginnings of SNL
The first Secret Screening to take the Fantastic Fest audience by storm was Saturday Night, based on the stressful production of the first episode of Saturday Night Live. Now, before embarking on this review, it needs to be stated up front that this reviewer was already exhausted, and the film began close to midnight. Typically, midnight programming is more intense because of the witching hour, so it was a surprise to see them choose a comedy biopic.
The film is written by Gil Kenan (Ghostbusters: Afterlife) and co-written by Jason Reitman. It seems fitting that Reitman would be involved, considering his father, Ivan Reitman, had such a strong friendship with the legacy cast of early SNL. Yet, the one filmmaker who should be able to get this right, somehow does not.
The film mainly revolves around Gabriel Labelle (The Fabelmans) as SNL showrunner Lorne Michaels, as he navigates the chaos of a live television production. Surrounding Labelle is an ensemble including Dylan O’Brien as Dan Akroyd, J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle, Willem Dafoe as NBC exec David Tebet, Nicholas Braun distractingly in two roles as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman, Cory Michael Smith in a perfect performance as Chevy Chase, and many more.
Saturday Night undoubtedly has an energy to it, jumping from one stressful scenario to the next. We see Lorne trying to figure out costumes, the sketches, the writing, and struggling to control Jon Belushi’s (Matt Wood) anger. The one credit that must be given to Reitman and Kenan is the screenplay, which does not depict everyone with rose-colored glasses. Most of the men of SNL from the early days seem like insufferable personalities. Belushi, Chase, and Berle especially fall into this category.
Reitman’s approach with the material is a disjointed collision of The Bear and Brooklyn 99. He tries to emulate the stressful environment of The Bear’s wildly chaotic and anxiety-inducing energy. The film pauses for various personas to do bits, almost like segments of the movie were written like an SNL sketch. Neither of these styles is successfully executed or blended perfectly.
The biggest problem with Saturday Night is that it aims to show viewers the stress and process of putting on a live production. While it takes inspiration and cues from The Bear, it also misses the point of why that show works. The Bear explicitly shows each step, from cooking the food to serving the customer and building relationships with consumers and staff. By the time Saturday Night ends, most viewers will know less about live production and its process than before, and it makes for a mostly dull payoff when it all comes together.
Despite a few great performances, Saturday Night leaves much to be desired as a tribute to one of television’s longest-running shows. While this might be serviceable to the generation that grew up in the time period, nostalgia aside, watching a cast of egos try to make a television program clearly is not enjoyable. In that way, Saturday Night succeeds, I suppose.
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