A rich guy purchases the services of a sex worker for a one-week “girlfriend experience,” which turns into something even better than the real thing — does this sound familiar? Rewind back to 1990, and you can see how, given the right combination of casting, sitcom-level humor and materialistic wish fulfillment, someone can turn the oldest profession in the world into an audience-friendly facsimile of empowerment. The shadow of Pretty Woman hangs over Sean Baker‘s Anora, but not in an anxiety-of-influence kinda way; it’s less a cover version auto-tuned for the present moment than an answer track, a fractured-fairy-tale take on the Prince Charming fantasy that sticks around long enough for the comedown. Like the rest of Baker’s back catalog, this raucous blend of lap dances and the late capitalism blues is nothing if not bursting with humanism and a nonjudgmental sense of life in the margins — in this case, New York’s Russian diaspora, those grinding it out in the sex trade, and the Venn diagram in between. And like Garry Marshall’s rose-colored romantic comedy, it nails the casting part to a tee.
Meet Anora, though everyone calls her “Ani.” She’s the last of the exotic dancers grinding away on clients in the movie’s opening slo-mo assembly line of strippers, each of them performing their duties with steadfast professionalism. As played by Mikey Madison (more on her in a moment), Ani doesn’t invite pity or envy. She’s just another woman working the V.I.P. room at the club, chatting up customers when she’s not feuding with her fellow employees and demanding that the D.J. “show them some fucking respect.” (He wouldn’t even consider her playlist!)
Then the boss tells the ladies that some big spender has come in and asked for a dancer who speaks Russian. Ani fits the bill, but she’s reluctant to step up; there’s a reason this third-generation immigrant doesn’t use her more ethnic-sounding name. Still, one lap with cash-filled pockets is as good as the next. The guy’s name is Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), but everyone calls him “Ivan.” He’s the son of an oligarch, an adorable twentysomething manchild whose English is passable and love of partying knows no bounds. Ani gives him the special “not allowed” treatment in a private room. “God bless America,” he replies in awe.
Before he leaves, Ivan asks Ani if she works outside the club. Soon, she’s visiting him in his mansion, giving him a lot of one-on-one attention. Ivan acts like the world’s horniest puppy dog, but Ani takes a shine to him. The pillow talk gets a little more personal. She crashes at his place after an opulent New Year’s Eve bash, waking up way past her previously estimated time of departure. But Ivan doesn’t want her to go. The mal’chik makes an offer: Let me purchase your company for a week. They negotiate a fee. He gets a beautiful young woman on his arm and in his bed. She gets to live like a queen for seven days. Just as you’re ready to call this a sparkling Cinderella story for the 21st century, Baker frames Ani leaving the house as maids clean up this rich kid’s morning-after mess around her. The object of his affection is still hired help.
Cue montage of nonstop hedonism, American style, with Ani and Ivan whooping it up with his friends all around Manhattan. Someone casually mentions Vegas, and one chartered flight later, the gang is running around Sin City and treating $20k losses at casinos like a goof. The week is almost up. Worse, Ivan knows he’s going to have go back to Russia soon and leave his wastrel days behind to work for Dad. If he could marry a U.S. citizen, however, then he can stay and the party never has to end. The rich kid and the stripper get hitched in a chapel off the strip. Take That’s “Greatest Day” scores the newlyweds running around in a state of financially independent bliss; instead of telling off a snooty shop clerk, Ani gets to inform her rival at the club that “jealousy is a disease” and ride off into the sunset. It all climaxes with a drone shot pulling back from the happy couple standing on the balcony of their Brighton Beach billionaire love nest, a happily-ever-after fit for a Disney princess with a thick outer-borough accent.
This is where we usually waltz out of the theater, right after the white knight rescues his true love and, per Julia Roberts, she rescues him right back. Anora, however, is merely getting started. Because, fun fact: Ivan is still living in his parents’ place, still on his parents’ shiny dime, which means he still has to answer his parents. So does Toros (Karren Karagulian, a key fixture in Baker’s films), the glorified Armenian babysitter employed by Mom and Pop Zakharov. And they are not the slightest bit pleased that their baby boy has gone off and married some Brooklyn shlyukha. Toros sends his brother, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan), and thug-for-hire named Igor (Compartment No. 6‘s Yuri Borisov) to keep the happy couple on lockdown until the marriage can be annulled.
When Ivan finds out his folks are flying in from Moscow, however, the lad bolts. Ani can more than handle herself with these bumpling captors — the lady is a scrapper — but she’s still left on her own. Now the abandoned wife, along with Toros and his crew, have to track down the AWOL oligarch offspring ASAP or else. The clock’s ticking. Exit Pretty Woman. Enter Uncut Gems.
Or rather, step right into Anora‘s version of a modern screwball comedy, the kind of gleefully profane genre homage that makes you wonder if the ghosts of William Demarest and Eugene Pallette are suddenly going to show up and drop F-bombs. Baker has always excelled at whipping up everyday-people stories into high-manic mode, whether they involve transgender L.A. streetwalkers (Tangerine), Sunshine-State motel dwellers (The Florida Project) or hustling Texas fuck-ups (Red Rocket). Blessed with a perfectly matched quartet, the filmmaker choreographs a series of manic set pieces that take them from that extravagant mansion to the restaurants, social clubs and after-hours hangout spots that characterize Brooklyn’s Eastern-Europe-by-proxy outposts. Regionalism reigns supreme in his movies, and Anora makes good use of his anthropological eye, as well as his ringmaster’s control of chaos and his love for these eking out a living in the margins. When Anora won the grand prize at Cannes this year, Baker dedicated the award to “sex workers past, present and future.” Forget empowerment by billionaire patrons. The writer-director gives these unsung, oft-judged heroes of labor empowerment via empathy and representation.
He’s aided and abetted by a cast that allows the movie to be breezy one second and heartbreaking and/or black-humorously rough the next. Eydelshteyn as the toussle-haired picture of immature privilege, Karagulian’s put-upon portrait of middle management, Tovmasyan and Borisov’s slapstick sad-sack double act — there’s not a weak link in the chain. But what truly makes Anora a near-masterpiece of cockeyed humanism in addition to a cutting indictment on cash ruling everything around everybody is the young woman occupying this romp’s center square. As one of the best things about Pamela Adlon’s FX show Better Things and a death-by-flamethrower standout in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Mikey Madison has already made her mark. This role ups said impact level on viewers to seismic. She’s the beating heart and thrusting hips of Anora, gifting the film with a woman too tough to break, too Teflon to ding up and too Tiger-style aggressive to be taken advantage of. Anora may be the poor little Russian-American waif relying on her sister’s house and the kindness of paying strangers to get by, but “Ani” is a wageslave warrior. It’s not an alter-ego so much as a suit of armor. Her character is frequently unclothed but never truly, vulnerably naked.
And yet, even when Ani knows this situation is too good to be true — that her manic Chalamet dream boo is no Prince Charming, much less a savior — she still goes all in. Madison gives you 100-percent of this on a fake silver platter, dressed up in real Russian sables. She exits stage left as an above-the-title star. Then, just when you’ve think you’ve seen the full multitudes of this working-class martyr, the actor downshifts and manages to crack you in two. Baker begins to seed early on that Igor is not the coldblooded brute he might appear to be. Borisov adds to this notion by giving what you think is a standard-issue gopnik a sensitive-soul vibe. The idea that the goon on the sidelines might be the movie’s stealth MVP starts to seem less and less far-fetched.
All of which leads to an ending that doubles as a cathartic exhalation. I have not stopped thinking about Anora‘s a final, extended shot since seeing the film at Cannes, how it exemplifies the way that old habits die hard and a single act of tenderness can leave you shattered. Several viewing later, the scene is no less powerful in making you realize you’ve been watching a master illusionist at work. Then the mask drops. Everything is transactional in this world of love and anarchy, war and punch-cards. Some things, however, like kindness, generosity — and the feeling you get when you watch a movie that reaffirms why the medium is still capable of generating miracles in the losing battle between art and commerce — are priceless.
From Rolling Stone US
