Anora: Sean Baker's 'startlingly wise and tender' film is his most 'vivid creation yet'

"Frenetic and funny, fiery and profane", Sean Baker's "brilliant" new film, "Anora" is a "screwball Cinderella tale", said Xan Brooks in The Guardian.

The "boisterous New York caper", which won the coveted Palme d'Or at Cannes in May, is sure to turbo-charge Baker's career, vaulting him towards "greatness". But it's a "joint triumph"; Mikey Madison "gives a performance for the ages" in the title role of Anora – the film's "flawed, fearsome heroine".

The action kicks off at the midtown Manhattan strip club where Anora (who prefers to go by Ani) works. She soon meets Vanya (Mark Edelstein), the "gawky, spoilt son of a Russian oligarch" with more money than he knows what to do with, and free run of his parent's enormous Brighton Beach mansion. He offers her $15,000 to move into his home and become his girlfriend for the week. It isn't until after their booze and drug-fuelled Las Vegas wedding that the "souffle collapses in spectacular style".

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"Anora" reaches its "shrill crescendo" when a "pair of hapless Russian goons arrive to annul the marriage". But Ani's response has them "reeling"; she won't go down without a fight. "It is a superb, breathless set piece: savage and hilarious, and on the outer edge of control."

The "outrageously funny" sequence, which sees three "burly men try and fail to control this 5'3'' force of nature", is followed by a desperate search for Vanya, who disappears at the first sign of trouble, said Robbie Collin in The Telegraph.

Baker, who wrote, edited and directed the film, feels "steadier and more confident" than in his previous films, wrote Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. The film "effortlessly" slides between three acts: the first feels like an "explicit" take on "Pretty Woman"; the second is a "frantic screwball comedy"; and the third and final act – "well, I'll let you find that out on your own". That Baker manages to pull this off is a "marvel of filmmaking and acting".

A tale of "wealth, power, and what love can and can't overcome", like many of Baker's films "Anora" is at its core "about the limits of the American dream" and the "invisible walls that stand in the way of fantasies about equality and opportunity". Madison is "mesmerising" throughout; "I left the theatre on a high, exhilarated by the performances".

The film seems likely to "catapult" Baker from "indie critical darling" to the "rarer" type of filmmaker whose work is both widely praised by critics and watched by large audiences, said Dana Stevens in Slate. Somehow he has managed to craft a "crowd-pleaser" that's also "startlingly wise and tender".

By the end of the film we love Ani "unconditionally, like Baker does", said Jessica Kiang on the BFI, which makes the "emotional wallop" of the final scene remarkably powerful. "By turns swoony, funny, panicky and sad, this is the director's most vivid creation yet."