Writer-director Sean Baker’s latest foray into the private lives of people who make their privates public opens brilliantly, as New York City stripper/escort Anora (a gung-ho, all-in Mikey Madison) grinds her way through her daily grind, making nice with a steady procession of customers, one replacing another so seamlessly that they run together just as they must in our heroine’s mind. Then, during a break, a co-worker marvels that one fellow “told me how much I reminded him of his daughter, then ordered five private dances from me!” (The horror.) “At least he paid for the dances,” replies Anora. (The banality.) That’s Baker, mingling the deeply personal and the “merely” physical in ways feel moral without feeling moralistic. Talking of which: the reason Anora (who prefers “Annie”) gets picked to take care of Ivan, the young Russian playboy who shows up at her club, is that she had a grandmother who never learned English after coming over from the old country. Ivan is so taken with her attentions that he hires her for a week of sexy partytimes and whisks her off to Vegas, a city famous for its spur-of-the-moment weddings. What fun! He even tells her that he’d be happy with her even without his parents’ money. Annie tries not to believe him, but she doesn’t have enough happy reality to counter the much happier fantasy — there’s a sister (who feels like she should show up more), but no future. Small surprise when a mid-video game quickie gets interrupted by Ivan’s long-suffering babysitter Garnick and his assistant Igor. The manhunt that follows is longer than it needs to be, and even a bit indulgent, but still largely entertaining — a description which fits the film as a whole. Perhaps the director’s most conventional effort to date; it even veers toward cliché in its final scene. But what comes before is strong enough to make it hit anyway. (2024) — Matthew Lickona