Anora

“Anora brilliantly demonstrates how gender, race, and class can intersect in one character.”

Title: Anora (2024)
Director: Sean Baker 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writer: Sean Baker 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Weiting 👩🏻🇨🇳🇺🇸

Technical: 4.25/5

As part of New York Film Festival's main slate, Anora explores writer-director Sean Baker's recurring subject of sex workers. Evolving from the simple settings of smartphone-shot Tangerine (2015) and Florida Project (2017), Baker launches into screwball thrills and tragicomedy.

Spellbinding breakout star Mikey Madison plays Ani/Anora, a savvy 23-year-old Uzbek American sex worker. Minutes into the story, she falls in lust with her client Ivan Zakharov (Mark Eidelshtein), the 21-year-old son of a Russian oligarch. What starts out between them as transactional sex quickly turns into an extravagant whirlwind of partying, and they eventually elope in Las Vegas. As Ivan's parents hear about the news, they send his handler Toros (Karren Karagulian) and henchmen Igor (Yura Borisov) and Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) to annul the marriage. Fights and heartbreak quickly ensue, and Ani's Cinderella fairytale begins to crumble.

To call this an emotional rollercoaster would be an understatement. Seemingly Baker's most light-hearted film at first, it turns out as sobering as his previous work. The film's pacing transitions from farcical frenzy to heavy suspense, before culminating into a poignant and powerful ending. As we come down from cinematographer Drew Daniels' neon lighting and woozy handheld shots, Baker hits us with the much-needed reality check that fulfills Ani's character development and laments her loss of innocence.

Gender: 4.75/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE

Movies seldom present sex workers as multi-dimensional people, but Ani is never reduced to a trope or treated as a victim. Instead, she uses resourcefulness to take control of challenging circumstances. Anora is always about her and never about her relationships with men.

The film also takes a nuanced look at gender dynamics, overlaying them with class commentary. When the powerful Zakharovs continuously send men to threaten Ani and try to buy her off, they assume that she’ll easily cave. But Ani subverts their expectations of a working-class woman and holds onto her integrity, refusing to be cowed by bribery or intimidation.

Race: 3.5/5

The main cast is predominantly Russian and white. Ani has Uzbek heritage, but it’s only mentioned when she first meets Ivan at the strip club. She tells him, "I don't speak Russian. But I understand it," and she prefers to be called Ani instead of her full Uzbek name, Anora.

On a deeper level, this brief but important exchange hints at Ani’s broader sense of alienation. In gritty Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, her marginalized ethnicity in the historically Russian-Jewish enclave offers an unspoken explanation of why she might have had to resort to sex work in the first place. Like the neighborhood itself, Ani gets caught between two worlds: the old world, represented by the Zakharovs, and the new world of inclusivity that she strives to navigate.

Mediaversity Grade: B+ 4.17/5

With Anora, Baker explores another empathetic narrative about a sex worker that easily avoids exploitation. Ani is as real as she is extraordinary, and the film brilliantly demonstrates how gender, race, and class intersect in her character.

Like Anora? Try these other titles featuring sex workers.

Grade: BLiNovember 30, 2024