By James Kent
Anora is an exotic dancer at a Manhattan strip club. She dabbles in sex work on the side if the money’s right, and she’s interested enough in the man. At the club, she meets a young, immature son of a Russian oligarch. Anora, who goes by Ani, gets the assignment because she lives in the predominantly Russian Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn and speaks a bit of Russian courtesy of her non-English-speaking grandmother.
It doesn’t take long for Anora to make a connection with the son, Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov, who offers her $15,000 to spend a week exclusively with him.
Does this plot sound familiar? Have you ever heard of a little film from 1990 called “Pretty Woman?” That film used a similar premise: a Hollywood strip sex worker, played by Julia Roberts, gets a $3,000 offer to spend six days with a corporate merger tycoon, Richard Gere. The film is pure fantasy, a classic Cinderella story, where a down-on-her-luck princess-in-waiting has her dreams come true in the form of the ultimate Prince Charming, Richard Gere. Today, the very thought of this plot is beyond embarrassing, and the sanitization of Roberts’ profession in the movie was embarrassing back in 1990. I can attest that when I saw the film in college on a plutonic date with a girlfriend, I was left gobsmacked that by the end of the movie, every woman in the audience, my movie date included, was bawling her eyes out. Hollywood knows what works.
Any comparisons between “Pretty Woman” and director Sean Baker’s more nuanced, graphic, and realistic approach to sex workers in “Anora” begin and stop after Ani and Vanya’s week together begins. For 45 minutes, we, the audience, get caught up in the whirlwind romance between two young and relatively immature kids in their early 20s who go from a sex-for-hire contract to genuine feelings. As messed up as this spoiled rich Vanya kid is, there is something likable about him. Underneath the wild, “let’s party” façade of this man/boy left alone in a Brighton Beach mansion while his parents leave him in the hands of “minders” while they stay back in Russia, Vanya, played to great effect by Russian actor Mark Eydelshteyn garners empathy. Although we, the audience, don’t believe for one minute that Ani and Vanya will have any hope for a lasting relationship, we buy that, in the vortex of a wild week together, they do. And when Vanya sweeps Ani away for an impromptu party session in Las Vegas and then proposes marriage while there, we buy into the impulsiveness. The pair get married, and now all that’s left for this nouveau princess, Ani, to do is quit her job at the strip club and ride off into a Brighton Beach sunset.
But as this film is two hours and 20 minutes long, and everything I’ve described happens in the first 45 minutes, things won’t be this happy, tidy, or smooth sailing. What occurs in the film’s next hour and 35 minutes elevates the movie from a pretty good time to something of a film masterpiece.
Sean Baker, whose previous films focused on sex workers and other human beings on the fringes of society, looking to scratch and claw their way into some successful life, fires on an elevated level here with “Anora.” Shooting on 35mm film with the dreamy lighting of cinematographer Drew Daniels, Baker isn’t afraid to go handheld to capture the film’s immediacy. The film doesn’t look like a documentary, but at times, it feels like one because the performances in the movie rise above the standard approach to acting. Baker, performing double duties as editor, also selects all the right shots. Everything in this film feels purposeful as if it was supposed to be there. Baker draws you into the story without being overly flashy. At times, I was unaware that I was watching a film at all, so engrossed I was with the characters on screen and the storytelling.
Once word gets out that Vanya is married, with the rumor circulating through his handlers that he’s married a “prostitute,” the plot ramps up. There is a 25-minute sequence when Vanya’s parents send his handlers to find out what’s going on at the mansion; that is some of the most intense, surprising, and unexpected moments I’ve seen on film in quite a long time. They present a challenge for me—how do I tell you how amazing these 25 minutes are and not spoil the surprises? Well, it’s easy: I won’t.
From these 25 minutes, Baker takes the audience on a further journey, an absurdist hunt for a missing character that provides an opportunity to get to know side characters one doesn’t usually get to learn about in this type of movie, and cements this film as one of the true cinematic gems of the 21st Century.
There isn’t a bad performance in this film. As good as everyone in the movie is, the best reason to see this film is what I’ve been leading up to—Mikey Madison. Madison is an actress known for playing Pamela Adlon’s oldest daughter in the television show, “Better Things.” She also played Susan “Sadie” Atkins in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” and she was also in 2022’s “Scream.” But as the titular character Anora, Madison showcases her acting talents in a performance that is nothing shy of a masterclass tour de force. Every emotion she’s asked to play, every risk she must take in this performance, Madison goes there. A clear trust between actor and director comes across the screen here thanks to Madison’s go-for-broke performance and Baker’s superb direction. The risks Madison is willing to take with this performance reminds me of a similar risk-taker in Emma Stone’s wonderful creation of Bella Baxter in last year’s “Poor Things.”
Madison’s Anora is a sex worker, but she is no trope or victim. And throughout her character’s journey, she maintains her agency from the first frame to the last. Anora buys into the Cinderella fantasy for as long as the carriage ride lasts, but she is at her ferocious best when the carriage turns into a pumpkin. It may be a while before I see a performance or a film that’s this good again.
A warning for the squeamish: “Anora” is graphic in its depiction of sex. It won’t be for everyone. There were four walkouts during the screening I attended, although those came during those brilliant, intense twenty-five minutes I’ve mentioned, not during the sex scenes.
“Anora” is playing in theaters, although not in Vermont. The Roxy in Burlington, which was going to show it, shuttered its doors on Thursday, Nov. 7, another loss for Vermont moviegoers.
James Kent is the publisher’s assistant at The Mountain Times and the co-host of the “Stuff We’ve Seen” podcast at stuffweveseen.com. If you have a film or television show you’d like him to review, please email him at editor@mountaintimes.info.
