Anora

“Anora brilliantly demonstrates how gender and class 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 The Florida Project (2017), Baker launches into screwball thrills and tragicomedy.

Spellbinding breakout star Mikey Madison plays Ani/Anora, a savvy 23-year-old Russian 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 Garnik (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: 4.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

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 send men who 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: 1.75/5

Though set in diverse cities of New York and Las Vegas, main characters are white—Russian and Armenian. They're mostly two-dimensional, with Russian nationals like Ivan and his parents portrayed as stereotypically rich and flashy oligarchs, while Armenians Toros and Garnik serve as comedic fodder, often referred to solely by their ethnicities rather than by their names. (On the plus side, they're cast authentically with Armenian actors.)

Among the cast, only Ani’s ethnicity has some level of nuance. She’s American and part Russian, living in the historically Russian-Jewish enclave of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. When first introduced to Ivan because of her language skills, she demurs, "I don't speak Russian. But I understand it,” adding that she has a Russian grandmother. But the film leaves it at that, avoiding any further examinations of ethnic identity.

In minor roles, a few dancers at the strip club where Ani works are women of color, but there's no character of significance for anyone who isn't white (or Armenian, depending on where you sketch the hazy line of who's considered “white”).

Mediaversity Grade: B- 3.50/5

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 and class intersect in her character.

Like Anora? Try these other titles featuring sex workers.

Grade: BLiNovember 30, 2024