Borat 2 arrived on Amazon Prime overnight, and has been praised as a brutal and exceedingly awkward pisstake of America in the era of Trump and COVID. The surprise centrepiece of the film, however, is a breakout performance from Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova.
The young actress plays Borat’s daughter Tutar, who stows away with him on his trip to America, and has brushes with various powerful real-life men, from Mike Pence to Rudy Giuliani, who hits on her in a hotel, and sticks his hand down his pants.
Maria Bakalova proves to be the perfect comedic foil for Sacha Baron Cohen. The movie itself acknowledges early on that Borat is too famous to go totally unrecognised in the US, to she does a lot of the heavy lifting, handling many scenes on her own.
She has been hailed as the movie’s secret weapon, and she throws herself headlong into the character, giving her all, whether she is gushing about the joys of masturbation at a conservative women’s event, or cooped in in a hotel bedroom the aforementioned Giuliani.
Interestingly, before the film’s release, Bakalova’s identity was kept secret, and she was billed under the pseudonym Irina Novak. Now Borat 2 is out and she has been unmasked, fans have discovered the young actress’s Instagram, and are stunned by her transformation for the role.
In a recent Good Morning America interview, Baron-Cohen revealed that Bakalova was chosen rom more than 600 young women for the role of Tutar, and praised her “hilarious, courageous” performance, which is by turns deeply funny and surprisingly emotional.
Borat 2, otherwise known as Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, is streaming now on Amazon Prime.
