In a gaudy Las Vegas chapel, Brooklyn stripper Anora — played by Mikey Madison — marries Mark Eydelshteyn’s Vanya, the son of a Russian oligarch. Two weeks later, the couple is divorced. You probably aren’t surprised. Sean Baker’s new film, “Anora,” is about the bloom and collapse of an improbable dream. It’s disappointing; we’d like to believe in the Cinderella story, that hierarchy can be ignored and discarded so that myth may emerge in its place. Baker refuses to deliver that satisfaction. In “Anora,” the fantasy crumbles into dust — albeit glittery, Brighton Beach dust. We are left only with Anora’s sadness.
The film begins at Headquarters, the strip club where Anora — who goes by Ani — works. The camera pans right to left as a series of women give lap dances in the Manhattan club, dubbed “HQ.” From this first scene of the film, Baker dominates with aesthetics: fishnets, the twinkle of Ani’s hair tinsel, bare skin flushed bluish by the lacquer club light. Ani swings her hair and flashes a smile. Madison gives a hypnotic performance. The camera, much like the viewers, can’t take its gaze from Ani.
At HQ, Ani meets Vanya. He’s boyish and goofy and obscenely rich. He orders a bottle, and the two leave for a private room. Ani speaks in broken Russian and Vanya offers up bad English in return. Despite the transactional environment, the encounter somehow feels genuine, charged with the pair’s innocent chemistry. Strip Vanya of his money, and Ani of her eight-inch heels, and you might believe them to be two high schoolers in love.
The next day, Ani visits Vanya’s bayside mansion, where he pays her for sex. Ani is enraptured by the extravagance of the house and Vanya is spellbound by Ani. In what feels like no time, Vanya begins to pay Ani to be “exclusive,” and she leaves behind her job at HQ. Feverishly hedonistic days ensue. The two fly to Vegas. Vanya proposes to Ani. She doesn’t believe him. He promises her, twice, that he is being serious. Soon, she’s wearing a glaring cut of diamond on her ring finger. They kiss at the altar.
Such is the frantic and thrilling pace of the first act of “Anora.” Viewers, like Ani, are incredulous to it all. Did they really just get married? Is this all some sick joke? Back home in Brooklyn, Anora asks Vanya whether she will meet his parents, to which he offers a dismissive non-answer. Though she looks confused — as if the pairing of a prostitute and an oligarch’s son is unremarkable — it feels as though, deep down, she grasps the truth. It’s just too upsetting to confront.
Vanya’s parents inevitably learn of their marriage and order three Armenian henchmen — Toros, played by Karren Karagulian, Garnick, played by Vache Tovmasyan and Igor, played by Yura Borisov — to get the union annulled. Soon after the goons arrive at Vanya’s house, a furious Vanya runs out the front door. Ani, however, is restrained by Igor and unable to escape with her husband. Ani, in her thick Brooklyn accent, screams a slew of cuss words. She kicks and bites. The Armenians treat her like an animal. Igor wraps his arms around Ani’s body to prevent her from escaping, too. Hours later, defeated and presented with the prospect of a cash reward, she agrees to help them find Vanya.
Like Ani, we believe this at first to be a lapse in the fantasy; of course Vanya will return. The hope erodes as the miserable slog to find Vanya continues, and they eventually find him back at HQ with another stripper. He’s drunk and silent. Ani begs him to listen to her but he ignores her pleading. Her desperation becomes obvious, as any power she had over him seems entirely lost.
The next day we meet Vanya’s parents. His mother, furious, demands that Ani join them on a private jet to Nevada to get the marriage annulled. Outside the jet, Ani asks Vanya if they are getting a divorce. He responds, “Of course, are you stupid?” and pauses before adding, more sensitively, “Thank you for making my last trip to America so fun.” Ani winces at the remark. Then, the truth sets in: The most promising period of her life was just another temporary thrill for Vanya. The anguish flashes upon her face. She seems to ask herself, just as the audience does, how she ever thought it would end differently.
Back from Vegas with the divorce finalized, Igor drives Ani back to her home in Brooklyn. Though employed by the family, and so cruel toward Ani before, Igor has grown softer now. He clearly empathizes with her situation — like Igor, she’s been controlled by a family indifferent to her well-being. Unexpectedly, Igor gives Ani her wedding ring, one she had given to Toros and thought lost. It’s a tender moment of solidarity.
The film’s shape then begins to take form: A euphoric beginning collapses into a nightmarish unraveling. Then, sorrow leaks from the rubble. The film’s final scenes are quiet and painful. Before Ani walks to her front door, she has sex with Igor in the car. Ani breaks down. In the final shot, she sobs in Igor’s arms. There’s a moment of catharsis as Ani lets go of the dream. The conclusion — Ani returning back to her old life — feels predestined. Perhaps that is the tragedy.
It’s easy to anticipate critiques of “Anora” — that it’s a fun but ultimately empty movie. That Baker, like so many, provides a hollow depiction of a sex worker. One review on Letterboxd claims that “[Baker] doesn’t confront the reasons for Ani’s anguish because he hasn’t begun the difficult work of entering and understanding her world.” With “Anora,” Baker admittedly does not provide a beginning, middle or end of Anora’s life. We do not glimpse much of her family or friends or learn why she is so eager for Vanya to whisk her away from her life.
What we do understand, however, is her desperation for salvation. Along with Ani, we recoil at Vanya’s petulance and his silence. We dream, against reason, that Vanya’s parents will accept her. The film’s strange fluctuations — the noise, the darkness, the flares of color, the strip clubs and love scenes and violence — create a lurid world of frustration, allowing the viewer to pray, alongside Ani, for her delusion of a life with Vanya. We, too, exhale when Ani sinks into Igor’s arms, finally absorbing the loss of Vanya. Just like Ani, we swallow her fate.
Desire is enough to humanize a character and animate a film. The strength of Ani’s wanting — though we may not understand its contours — fuels “Anora.” Ultimately, Baker tells a story of someone on the margins who is allowed, briefly, into a family of unimaginable privilege.
When the order lapses and they are brought into the center of that power, they become rabid to remain. In the end, Ani is cast aside. The rules reaffirm themselves. Her final cries echo as the credits roll.
Rating: ★★★★★
