When he's not dusting off his trophy or allowing his friends to pose with him, Sean Baker is slowly getting used to the Palme d'Or he received for the delightful comedy Anora. “I can’t stop looking at and fiddling with my Palme,” he confides to 20 Minutes. I never thought a sexy, independent film like mine could win.” Greta Gerwig and her jury decided otherwise at the Cannes Film Festival last May.
“I do not consider Anora as an overtly political film, he explains. However, I speak of a despised America: that of sex workers who are too inclined to stigmatize.” The heroine who gives its title to the film (marvelous Mikey Madison, a discovery) is a stripper who does not hesitate to charge for her person until the day she comes across the young son of an oligarch who decides to 'marry. “I have been told a lot about Pretty Woman remembers Sean Baker, “but I see her more as a modern Cinderella, innocent in her own way.”
Fifteen sex scenes
Who says “sex worker” says..sex. There are numerous sexual sequences in Anora. “I didn’t try to make these passages erotic,” says the director of Red Rocket. They are there more to show what his job is with what involvement and professional conscience it may require than to titillate the viewer.”
There are fifteen sex scenes in Anora. Sean Baker cut three of them during editing not to censor himself but because they seemed redundant to him. “It’s a comedy, not an X-rated film,” he insists. Not that I have the slightest problem with this genre but it was not what I wanted to say in Anora. »
A festive shoot
The antics between the young woman and her suitor (played by the excellent Mark Eydelshteyn) are most joyous. “Their comfort was what mattered most to me,” recalls Sean Baker. I made sure that they did not feel embarrassed at any time. It was a rather festive collaborative process because I wanted the intimate scenes to be natural.” To the point that the duo added more for the good of the film. A memorable somersault by Mark Eydelshteyn, naked as a worm, made the audience burst out laughing.
“Mikey and Mark came to me with ideas for positions that I would never have dared to ask them,” laughs Sean Baker. That means they felt good on set. » Note, however, that these scenes are, of course, simulated. “In the United States, people found them shocking but my country is really very puritanical because, for my part, I don’t find them graphic. » Us neither.
The action in question
Sean Baker admits to having much more difficulty directing the action scenes than the sex scenes. “I was constantly afraid that people would get hurt,” he jokes. I think violence is less rooted in my genes than ass. » The arrival of Russian mafia henchmen in the story generates some scuffles that are more amusing than brutal. Anora brought a wave of madness to Cannes which should spread to French cinemas.
