Home » Features » Sean Baker's Anora Serves A Reality Check About Upward Mobility In A Transactional World

Features

Sean Baker's Anora Serves A Reality Check About Upward Mobility In A Transactional World

Sean Baker's<em> Anora</em> oscillates between dreamy, sexy, funny, edgy and foreboding — a tricky balancing act the film pulls off winningly.

Prahlad+Srihari

Nov 01, 2024

Still from Anora.

“TODAY this could be, the greatest day of our lives. Before it all ends, before we run out of time.”

Take That’s 2008 single 'Greatest Day' lavishes an anthemic blast of intoxicating energy to the opening frames of Sean Baker’s freewheeling bender, Anora. The camera pans across a cordon of strippers giving lap dances at an upscale Manhattan club in slo-mo. As the chorus kicks in, the focus centres on Mikey Madison’s Ani (short for Anora) writhing atop customer after customer. “Stay close to me. Watch the world come alive tonight. Stay close to me.” We watch Ani work the floor on a busy night, scanning for horny men to line her G-string with cash. Short of cash? She will personally escort the strapped to the ATM before leading them to the VIP area for a private dance or whatever fantasy could make it the greatest day of their lives. We are never in doubt as to who is in control here. The unruffled smile on Ani’s face makes sure of that.

Things, however, spin out of control when Ani becomes entangled with the son of a Russian oligarch. Anora oscillates between dreamy, sexy, funny, edgy and foreboding — a tricky balancing act the film pulls off winningly. Surefooted in its approach and propulsive in its effect, the film marks a major stride forward for Baker. This is of course not the first time he has centred the perspectives of sex workers. Starting with 2012’s Starlet and continuing through 2015’s Tangerine 2017’s The Florida Project and 2021’s Red Rocket, his films have always treated his resilient subjects with warm respect without othering them. Each of these films also has a clear sense of place. Tangerine followed a couple of transgender sex workers on LA’s Santa Monica Boulevard looking to confront a cheating boyfriend. The Florida Project concerned a single mom and her daughter scraping by in a shady Orlando motel just down the road from Disney World. Red Rocket was about a washed-up porn star who returns to his Texas hometown. In Anora, Ani gets swept up in a whirlwind anti-Cinderella romance that takes her all over New York, from Manhattan to Brighton Beach to Coney Island.

Madison, in lockstep with Baker, builds the titular character from the inside out while keeping her tethered to an identifiable reality. Ani’s busy night gets busier when her adequate grasp of Russian lands her in the lap of Mark Eydelshteyn’s Vanya, a lanky 21-year-old Russian throwing around US$100 bills like loose change. “God bless America,” he yells after she gives him a private dance. She is charmed enough to agree to a house call the next morning. The moment she enters his ritzy orbit, she finds herself saying yes to all his proposals. Yes — to being his girlfriend for a week for US$15,000. Yes — to an impromptu Las Vegas pleasure trip. And yes — to eloping. When the needle drops on 'Greatest Day' for the second time, the two are married. Without a prenup. Both are ready to “make a new start.” For “the future is theirs to find.” The mansion, the clothes, the jewellery and all the money convince Ani to believe she has snagged her whale — and that fairy-tale romances can come true.

As soon as word of their nuptials gets to Russia, the Cinderella story gets turned upside down. Vanya’s parents (Darya Ekamasova and Aleksey Serebryakov) dispatch his godfather Toros (Karren Karagulian) as well as a couple of henchmen, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), to pressure the newlyweds into annulling their marriage. The honeymoon descends into a farce after a breathtaking centrepiece: a home invasion gone wrong. When the henchmen show up at Vanya’s mansion with news of his parents flying down from Russia, Vanya bolts in fear, abandoning his new bride to fend for herself. And boy does she! As the men attempt to restrain her, she screams, punches, kicks, headbutts and bites, leaving one with a broken nose and the other bruised. The furniture, lamps and prized possessions in the house aren’t spared either. The damage she unleashes leaves all impressed. Madison packs into her character’s petite frame a will so strong she won’t back down from a fight with anyone. Not even a bunch of thugs can take away from her what she is owed, whether it is an explanation or a four-carat diamond ring.

When Ani, Toros, Garnick, and Igor go searching for Vanya all around the city, she starts to recognise the fundamental imbalance in their relationship. Once the haze of her honeymoon delirium disappears, she sees things more clearly: Vanya was just a pampered kid looking to sow his wild oats and scared of being cut off financially; to him, she was just another thing he could buy and play with till he got bored; he fled from his responsibility because he knew his parents will always send someone to clean up his mess. Long after Vanya and his parents have returned to Russia, it is easy to imagine Ani and the three men still picking up the pieces. In the second half, the sense of inequity is more pronounced. The complications make the action feel more perilous. Our familiarity with films set in similar worlds leaves us fearing the worst: of how easily things could go wrong, deadly wrong, for Ani. But Baker’s discerning gaze extends a certain degree of sympathy to even Toros, Garnick and Igor, three puppets whose strings are being tugged by someone more powerful elsewhere. As he quietly watches over Ani, Igor finds his own loyalties in conflict, his affection growing for a fellow striver commodifying their body.

Madison, who broke through as Pamela Adlon’s oldest daughter in the FX comedy Better Things informs Ani’s purposefulness with a distinct mixture of intelligence, vulnerability and dignity. It is a fearless performance that moves us without manipulating in any manner. As with acting, stripping is a performance. It is a fantasy sold to an audience eager to suspend disbelief. In both cases, nudity can be kind of like a work costume. Oddly enough, it is when Igor sees through Ani’s tough exterior and makes a kind gesture without expecting anything in return that she feels truly naked. Madison’s sense of spontaneity mixed with the film’s screwball humour ultimately turn Ani’s journey into one of transformative learning — a reality check about upward mobility in a transactional world.

Anora, which won the Palme d'Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, had its India premiere at this year's MAMI Mumbai Film Festival as part of the World Cinema section. The film will release in Indian cinemas from 8 November.