Anora (Sean Baker, 2024)

Sean Baker’s Palme winner throws us directly into the whirlwind encounter that re-contextualizes its protagonist’s life. Anora, who goes by Ani, is a 23 year-old sex worker in New York whose romance with Vanya, the son of a Russian oligarch, results in a marriage his parents are adamant to annul. What’s so magnificent about the film’s propulsive opening movement, which opens and closes with scenes ironically set to Take That’s hokey anthem Greatest Day, is the way Baker manages to formally explicate the illusory nature of Ani’s relationship without sacrificing any of its kinetic thrill. Baker finds beauty in the absurdity of Ani’s rise up the socioeconomic ladder. Through his galvanic club montages, revealing moments such as scenes of the couple haggling over everything from Ani’s fee to the number of karats in her ring, or comedic scenes of Ani and Vanya having bad sex actually become rhythmic counterpoints that cohere with Anora’s spectacular tone. The emblematic shot of the artificial rush occurs after Vanya’s impromptu proposal in Vegas (where he very pointedly shimmies out of frame). Celebrating in the casino, the couple is framed in front of digital fireworks displays. It’s all a sham, but it’s impossible not to be swept up.

As it eventually becomes clear, the self-possession of Baker’s initial immersion into Ani’s work is powered by a respect for her humanity. When Vanya’s parents discover the couple’s marriage, and are outraged that their son has married a prostitute, their mostly invisible force in the narrative stands in for a society that treats sex workers as subhuman. Proxied through three goons before their eventual arrival in the US, the parents Zakharov immediately shatter Ani’s fantasy, setting the stage for an embarrassing return to the strip club. Of course, nothing is that easy, so when Vanya goes AWOL, Ani is forced to accompany the three lackeys on a tour of New York to find him.

It’s in this snap to reality that Baker’s film begins to make a few missteps. The predetermined nature of Ani’s trajectory isn’t necessarily an issue, but the film is too transparent in its quest to get Ani to recognize that despite her brief dip into the upper-class, she’s no better than everyone else. I appreciated Baker’s consistent gestures towards the working-class people cleaning up Vanya’s messes up to a point, but had more of a problem with the characterizations of the three men Ani is trapped with. I suspect that those who love Anora love the farcical interactions between these four characters, but as someone who became somewhat tired of their antics, it seemed a bit too schematic that Toro, the leader of the bunch, is meant to be the guy yelling some sense into Ani, while the more sensitive Igor is trying to coax some sense of solidarity out of her with his more tender gestures. Their presence (especially Igor as a foil for Vanya) in the narrative is distractingly literary in a film that is actually aiming for heightened, gritty realism.

If Anora were just about tearing down its main character as some re-affirmation of the social order, it would be an awful film. Madison’s steely-eyed, sharp-tongued performance and the film’s narrative drive forestalls cheap miserablism. Instead, I think Baker is getting at a different, more intimate sort of tragedy. Ani’s willingness to buy into her flimsy marriage points to a world order where a widening wealth gap and increasingly demanding economic conditions mean that transactional relations are taken for granted, almost as a survivalist shorthand. Baker positions Ani as a young adult who has never known anything else, her estrangement from her family and culture, as indicated by her resistance towards using her real name, symptomatic of her stunted interpersonal perception. The tears in the overtly symbolic final scene aren’t just Ani realizing that her position is similar to Igor’s. Stopped in her tracks after attempting to reciprocate an act of kindness, she experiences a moment of true connection. The perspective she gains is a blessing and a curse.

Anora is distributed by NEON and in theaters now.