On the surface, Sean Baker’s “Anora,” which has been nominated for multiple Oscars and has already won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, doesn’t seem interested in the present political moment. For example, the film’s Russian and Russian American characters show no discernible awareness of a war started by Vladimir Putin in 2022. But upon closer inspection, the movie probes a timely subject: the superwealthy and how they bend and distort civil society to their selfish whims.
“Anora” is many things at once. It’s a meditation on sex work, a theme Baker examines with ingenuity in films like “Starlet,” “Red Rocket” and “Tangerine.” It’s a genre-toggler — shifting between a farcical rom-com, a gangster movie and an indie flick. It’s also a handy introduction to oligarchs and the obscene power they wield over institutions and the lives of working-class people.
“Anora” subverts the feel-good vibe that movies like “Pretty Woman” radiated when portraying sex workers and their “kindhearted” johns.
At first, “Anora” appears to be stampeding to what in earlier decades would have been its Hollywood ending. We watch an exotic dancer from the outer boroughs named Ani/Anora (Mikey Madison) practice her craft at the local strip club. Because she speaks some Russian, her manager introduces her to a patron named Vanya (played by Mark Eydelshteyn).
Cute and absurdly wealthy, 21-year-old Vanya takes an apparent shine to Ani. He invites her to accompany him from one bender to another. Ani, with tinsel in her hair, seems to like him too. Still, she negotiates her price on each cocaine-fueled outing. Soon they end up in Las Vegas, where assorted onlookers (and Sean Baker’s giddy camera work) celebrate their shotgun wedding as fireworks discharge above.
But then “Anora” subverts the feel-good vibe that movies like “Pretty Woman” radiated when portraying sex workers and their “kindhearted” johns. Hours after the Vegas wedding, Vanya’s disapproving Russian parents spring into action. None too pleased about their son’s marriage to “a prostitute,” they dispatch their local goon squad to annul the union. The goons are an Armenian Orthodox priest (Father Toros, played by Karren Karagulian) and his two enforcers Garnick (also Armenian, played by Vache Tovmasyan) and the Russian “gopnick,” or “street thug,” Igor (Yuriy Borisov).
Garnick and Igor break into Vanya’s Mill Basin mansion, a location with its own real-life connection to oligarchy. Vanya flees the scene, leaving his bride behind to deal with the intruders. What follows is no longer comedy, but every woman’s nightmare.
Having grown up in South Brooklyn, permit me to say that Mikey Madison does a spot-on imitation of a very pissed-off resident of Brighton Beach. Terrified Ani resists the goons and a wild melee ensues. After screaming “rape” at the top of her lungs, she is gagged. Father Toros — not, I surmise, a pro-choice advocate in his ministerial capacity — informs Ani that he will arrange an abortion should that be necessary.
Where, oh where is Vanya? Our boy has scampered off to other benders. His lushery encompasses Everything We Talk About When We Talk About Toxic Man-boys. Inability to establish emotional intimacy? Check. Obsession with video games? Yup. Construing sex as a sort of sprint? That too. We soon learn how little he cares about his wife. It is only the sex worker, Ani, who behaves as if marriage is a sacrament.
For oligarchs, by contrast, nothing is sacred. Vanya’s parents so control the priest Toros that he abandons a baby’s baptism midceremony to heed their call. If religious leaders will always play ball with the wealthy, so will the judicial system. In one crucial scene, these Russian nationals use their well-compensated American lawyer to set up an emergency annulment hearing in a New York City courtroom — which is the wrong place to annul a Nevada marriage. Now we are headed to Las Vegas. So are Vanya’s parents, who recently alighted from their jet and were rapidly processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Vanya’s mother, Galina (Darya Ekamasova), makes it very clear to Ani that she must agree to legally terminate her marriage (“You are getting on this plane [to Las Vegas] and you are getting divorce”). Failure to do so, she threatens gleefully, will result in legal destruction. Imagine that! A wealthy foreigner feels so flush with power that she can use the American legal system to bully a working-class citizen. Naturally, Galina insinuates that Ani will be physically harmed if she refuses to comply.
As they part, Galina calls Ani “a disgusting hooker.” Ani bites back: “Your son hates you so much, he married one to piss you off.” Finally, the verbal smackdown we have been craving. That’s the stuff! Make the oligarchs squirm, Ani!
But oligarchs, as it turns out, don’t squirm. Ani’s sick burn immediately elicits uncontrollable laughter from Galina’s husband (Aleksey Serebryakov). His Papa Karamazov cackle, at once nihilistic and demented, reminds us of a truism: The superrich find all of this human suffering stuff fantastically funny.
“Anora’s” final scene, which has been widely analyzed and debated, switches to art house mode. Ani initiates sex in a car with the “gopnik” Igor. She then breaks down and sobs over his supine body (the masculinity of the silent and supportive Igor might be usefully contrasted to Vanya’s loud, party-boy antics). The credits roll to the accompaniment of the loudest windshield wipers in the history of cinema.
Madison and Baker insist that the meaning of this cryptic scene is up to the viewer. With that interpretive license granted, permit me to advance my own. Yes, Ani is likely crying over the betrayal, violence and feelings of powerlessness she’s endured. But in light of “Anora’s” portrait of the elite, maybe we could think of this sobbing woman as us — the U.S., weeping over what the wealthiest people in the world are doing to Americans.
