The title character of Sean Baker’s Anora notably does not go by that name for most of the film, and appears uncomfortable when male characters tell her how pretty her birth name is. In fact, Mikey Madison’s character prefers to be called Ani, and it plays into the dominant theme of the film, which is how we define ourselves in relation to how others do. Ani is a young exotic dancer working out of a club in Brooklyn not far from the Russian enclave of Brighton Beach. Ani’s gregarious and fast-talking, a hustler if you will; it’s a topless club but she knows if she brings the right kind of big spender back to the private room she can get away with dropping her bottoms as well. She also moonlights as a well-paid escort making private visits to client’s homes where she has sex with them. She is, in judgment-free terms, a sex worker. And yet the surest way to wind her up and get her to act crazy is to call her a “prostitute” (kind of like calling Marty McFly “chicken”). Ani has a strong sense of herself and her worth as a person (and particularly the value of her services), but her perception does not necessarily align with the world’s. Reconciling who a person is deep down versus our impression of them is, when it comes down to it, the very nature of Baker’s film.
Ani quickly becomes the favorite stripper of Vanya (Mark Eidelstein) , a floppy-haired party boy — a child, really, in all but the legal sense — who’s initially smitten with her because she can speak Russian. Vanya is the son of Russian oligarchs who have allowed him to spend his early twenties in America so he can sow his wild oats before returning to Mother Russia to take his place within their organization. Adulthood and responsibility loom imminently, but until then Vanya lives in a mansion in a gated community, has endless amounts of cash to burn through, access to a private jet, and no live-in supervision. When he becomes smitten with Ani, she knows a good thing when she sees it. So begins a whirlwind “romance” in the most mercenary sense of the word. Ani is regularly beckoned to Vanya’s home to have sex for money, which eventually becomes an endless parade of parties, clubbing, and 20-something mischief. Ani may be having a blast with Vanya and his friends, but she hasn’t forgotten herself and she hasn’t taken her eye off the prize: when Vanya asks if he can rent Ani exclusively for a week, she does so for $15,000 cash (and as if to emphasize how transactional this all is, he playfully teases her that he would have paid double after they shake on the deal).
That all starts to change during an impromptu trip to Vegas when, in post-sex repose, Vanya advances an idea that would change both of their lives. If they were to get married Vanya could stay in America indefinitely and Ani would be set for life. When Ani astonishes herself by saying “yes,” it’s unclear whether there are hearts or dollar signs in her eyes. After a quickie wedding off the Vegas strip, the new husband and wife fly back to New York to spend their days idly lounging in a mansion that someone else is paying for, fucking each other’s brains out, and getting high all day. But about that house — that’s where the trouble comes in. As word slowly trickles out that Vanya has gotten hitched to “a prostitute,” a panic sets in across the globe, cracking a whip that’s felt thousands of miles away. Toros (Baker mainstay Karren Karagulian), an Armenian intermediary, is summoned from the middle of a christening — in a supremely awkward scene — to get his arms around the situation and ascertain whether the rumors are true. Toros in turn dispatches two flunkies, his chatty younger brother Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and the more introspective Russian Igor (Yuriy Borisov), to sit on Vanya and Ani until he can get to the house in order to separate the facts from fiction. A seriocomic confrontation ensues with a terrified Vanya fleeing the house on foot and leaving his bride behind, while a confused, practically feral, Ani all but destroys a floor of the mansion while trying to be “gently” subdued by Garnick and Igor. When Toros finally does arrive, after surveying the damage sustained to both the house and his men at the hands of Ani, he lays it all out for her and the viewer: they’re going to find Vanya, get him in front of a judge for a quickie annulment, and buy-off Ani, all by the time Vanya’s parents arrive in the U.S. on a red-eye the next morning.
So begins the long-odyssey-through-the-night aspect of Anora, with the three men and a compelled-by-force Ani searching for Vanya who is drunkenly roaming the hang-out spots of Brighton Beach. This thread, which makes up the bulk of the film’s 140-minute runtime, really does speak to how effectively Baker switches up tones and styles of filmmaking. The first third of the film passes in a blur; a rapid-fire yet somewhat enervating montage of decadence amidst adult playgrounds and well-furnished spaces, lit by red and blue gels and neon (the most memorable composition in the film is during a shot-on-the-fly sequence when newlyweds Ani and Vanya celebrate on Fremont Street in Vegas, their heads framed by the electronic fireworks display on the monitors above them). But the film shifts into something looser and talkier, with characters screaming over one another in a cacophony of agitated voices punctuated by Ani cursing people out and unexpected explosions of vomit (Garnick, you see, suffered a nasty concussion while attempting to detain Ani). The action relocates to the Coney Island boardwalk in the middle of winter, all gas stations and depressing-looking diners. But for all the desperate chatter, there are also a great many moments of prolonged silence as a dejected Ani is shoved into the back of an SUV and reflects on what her life has become, this while the imposing-looking yet ultimately gallant Igor unsuccessfully tries to make polite conversation to cut the tension.
But that underscores how little we got to know Vanya and, more importantly, how little Ani did. Ani rejects the very notion of being bought off to agree to an annulment — for all of $10,000, which both the character and the audience understands to be an insultingly low amount — standing on principle that Vanya is her husband and they are “in love.” But are they, and do either Ani or Vanya actually believe that? He abandons her at the fight sign of trouble and ignores her frantic phone calls so that he can drink himself into oblivion before facing the music. At the same time, when exactly did Ani supposedly stop viewing Vanya as a meal ticket and rather as her partner? And is she fighting so hard to keep him because there’s really love there or because she knows what life looks like when she has to go back to working on the pole? Has she in fact deluded herself into believing that she can have someone who will care for her and not objectify her, and if so, what does that look like with someone as immature and self-involved as Vanya?
These are the central questions of Anora, and the magic of Madison’s performance is that the more dire the situation looks — when any other person might resign themselves to the inevitability of the odds against a happy ending — the more the character retrenches; pledging loyalty and devotion to someone who’s fundamentally unworthy of her. She’s broken the golden rule of sex work: don’t fall for the fantasy. She is, in other words, a Sean Baker protagonist. Someone streetwise with a harsh edge who has allowed themselves to consider a life beyond their current station, confusing financial stability with emotional support, and there’s real ache to Ani beginning to let go of that dream. For much of the film, the character takes a literal backseat to Toros and his keystone kops antics, but Madison’s always drawing our gaze, silently stewing (occasionally even gagged with an expensive scarf) as the hopes for something better dissipate and her natural light slowly escapes her body. She’s taken money for sex before, but if she agrees to a pay-off simply to go away, can she really deny, even to herself, that she is a prostitute? Is that the final veil to fall away?
As the endless party gives way to the sobering cold light of day and the inescapable reality of what real power is and who actually wields it sets in, Baker’s pragmatic humanism comes to the fore. As he is uniquely gifted at — demonstrated across a filmography consumed with sex workers and those living on the fringes of polite society —, he bestows depth and grace to characters who have been defined, by themselves and others, as less than. The film’s extended denouement walks a precarious tightrope between an unrealistic happy ending and honoring the true nature of these characters who can’t shed their damages like an expensive sable or jewelry. They are flawed and self-defeating, but remain deserving of receiving (and capable of giving) kindness in their own imperfect ways. And that’s what Baker does: he breaks your heart into a thousand pieces, then helps you gather them all up. That’s the miracle of the film.
DIRECTOR: Sean Baker; CAST: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian; DISTRIBUTOR: NEON; IN THEATERS: October 18; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 19 min.
Originally published as part of TIFF 2024 — Dispatch 3.
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