Anora Shows Power as the Cover of Weakness

Anora – 2024

Written and Directed by Sean Baker
Starring Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshleyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyn, Darya Ekamasova, Aleksei Serebryakov

Sean Baker has quietly become one of our best film makers. His efforts covering marginalized people in American society (i.e. The Florida Project) are shocking and poetic. Anora may be his best example yet of how the other half lives…and dies inside.

Madison is 23 year-old Anora, known as Ani to her coworkers and clients at the strip club where she works. Her life takes a change for the better when she, by dint of understanding Russian, is introduced to the son of a Russian oligarch, Ivan Zakharov (Eydelshleyn).

The two immediately hit it off sexually. He asks her to call him Vanya, then he asks her to be his exclusive girlfriend for the week. Ani agrees to do it for $15k. She lets him know she would have done it for 10. This is the first volley in a back and forth where she thinks she’s winning.

During that wild week, they go to Vegas and after some wild sex, awkwardly agree that they should get married. Ani wants to believe him, even after he explains this will help him stay in the U.S. to avoid going back to Russia. When she asks about his parents, he just says his “parents are dicks…,” and starts playing video games.

Just when Ani begins to accept this could be her reality, things change and bring her to the cold reality of the haves and have nots.

The rest of the film is a sad absurdity. Some moments of true comedy draped in the sadness of the actual situation Anora finds herself in while draped in her temporary mother-in-law’s sable fir coat. During this time, Ani is very specific in her language. As if the clarification provides some sort of boundary between her and then inevitable loss that is headed her way.

She is treated like an opportunistic piece of meat by all but one. That one, a henchman with a kind heart named Igor (Borisov) she speaks horribly to and about throughout the night. She knows she can abuse this one person. She knows he could hurt her, but never would. This is an important lifeline as her world comes apart.

The conclusion of the film is a form of brutal poetry. Ani, using the one thing she think as her value to thank someone after the worst night of her life, literally falls apart in the process. It’s a subtle point where two small people recognize their true value and she screams because she thought she might have had more. She might have had more, for a while. She almost had something to call her own.

As Anora, Madison plays a role that would not have existed before her Generation Z. The scenes are pretty graphic, and somewhat of a trap for the viewer and the character. The actress takes so many risks that pay off in the long run of the film. She is someone who lacks confidence in every respect except her ability to get young men to part with their money. We see her complete surprise, then happiness as she gets a 4 carat diamond ring. This is matched by her complete internal breakdown when the ring is taken from her, as if confirming her inner dialogue that she was never worth it in the first place.

The rest of the acting talent, like usual for Sean Baker films, comprise of talented people I have never seen or heard of before. They all feel like the real deal. They are awkward, unfulfilled and worried about how they will be viewed in society. They know their role and they carefully manicure their lives to fit within it.

Sean Baker’s films are incredible. They are well developed trips into parts of society of which I am barely cognizant. The thing about it is, when you see these people in these situations miles from your own life, they turn out to have characteristics incredibly familiar. There but for the Grace of God, go I.

(***** out of *****)