Sean Baker does not approach the subject of sex work - both that of Anora and Mikey - in a tone of moral panic. He disenchants it and shows it simply as work, albeit with very specific risks.
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
On paper, Anora looks like a recipe for cinematic disaster: An erotic dancer of Russian descent, working in a New York club, meets at work the young son of a Russian oligarch just beginning his adult life, who becomes her regular client. The business relationship becomes increasingly personal, and the couple gets married in Vegas, which enrages the groom's parents.
Fortunately, Sean Baker, one of the most interesting filmmakers in American independent cinema, is responsible for the script and direction. We don't get Pretty Woman with the heir to an oligarchic fortune from Russia in place of Richard Gere, another version of the Cinderella fairy tale.
The Right to Happiness
The relationship between the title character and her husband Ivan ends in a series of tragicomic disasters. Three men knock on the door of a luxurious New York mansion: the Armenian Toros, who works for the boy's father and has long lived in New York, and his two helpers. One of them, Igor, looks as if he's snapped off the set of a movie about the Russian mafia penetrating New York's underworld. Toros was given a clear order by Ivan's parents - who learned about their son's marriage to a sex worker from social media - to explain what actually happened, annul the marriage, and spare the family further "embarrassment."
The film becomes most interesting when Ivan is relegated to the background and the conflict between Anora and Toros, Igor and the powerful family of Russian oligarchs is placed in the center.
The Brooklyn dancer turns out to be a much tougher case than Toros and his aides might have thought. She refuses to be intimidated and is determined to fight for her own. The girl's grandmother came from the former USSR, but she herself grew up in the States. And she has a deeply internalized principle enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming that people are endowed with "undeniable and inalienable rights," which include the right to the "pursuit of happiness." While we know how this pursuit will end, we can't help but root for the heroine.
Baker doesn't directly pose the question: did the title character ever love Ivan, or was the marriage just a transaction for her? Perhaps Anora herself is unaware of her motivations. However, we have no doubt that in the whole situation she is the one who has been unfairly treated. Although the whole world repeatedly tries to shame the girl - mainly because of her profession - she does not allow herself to be put in a position of shame, she successfully demands that her dignity be respected.
Mickey Madison in the role of Anora is sensational. Not only does she bring this character to life with extraordinary screen energy, but with a single gesture, glance, facial expression, she is able to imbue the scene with a wealth of subtle meanings. The last scene - when all the adrenaline and bravado descends from the character, her vulnerability and "woundedness" are revealed - is an absolute acting masterpiece.
Baker, on the other hand, is great not only in how he leads the actors and directs the intimate, psychological scenes, bringing out all their tragedy and comedy - Anora is incredibly funny in places - he also manages to brilliantly show the city as the backdrop of the story. The film is set mainly in Brighton Beach, a Brooklyn neighborhood populated in large numbers by migrants from Russia and other countries of the former USSR. The director and his cinematographer Drew Daniels bring out the full potential of the neighborhood. We haven't had such a fascinating, pulsing with dirty energy, non-touristy New York in cinema since The Uncut Diamonds by the Safdie brothers.
The dream of pornoutopia
Receiving the Palme d'Or for Anora at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Baker thanked "all the sex workers." Anora is not the first heroine working in the industry that the director has portrayed. His previous film Red Rocket (2021) showed porn actor Miki, who, after his career in California collapses, returns to his hometown in Texas - a hot town in the middle of the desert, built around an oil refinery that is the center of the town's economic and social life.
Mikey starts from scratch. He has nothing but a bicycle, suitable for a student in the last grades of elementary school rather than a stately grown man. He moves into the home of his mother-in-law and wife. The marriage has long been a sham; his wife is reluctant to let him sleep on the couch. Mikey can't find a job because of his professional past. To support himself, he starts selling marijuana.
All the while, however, he dreams of returning to the porn industry. He sees an opportunity in seventeen-year-old Raylee. He enters into a relationship with her and persuades her to go to California with him as soon as she turns eighteen and act in adult films together.
In the middle of the Texas desert, the porn industry in remote California appears as a utopian space, a place from the dream, a specific embodiment of the American dream. Mikey tells his former colleagues, who stayed behind when he left, about his work with well-known actresses in the industry, as if he were reporting on working with movie stars of the first magnitude. At the same time, as both Mikey's story and his relationship with Raylee show, the porn industry is capable of ruthlessly exploiting and crushing dreams.
Baker doesn't approach the subject of sex work - both that of Anora and Miki - in a tone of moral panic. He disenchants it and shows it simply as a job, albeit one that carries very specific risks.
Russian Rapture
However, while watching the excellent Anora, we feel a certain crush. The film is set in 2019, three years before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine begins. However, we are watching the film as we approach the third anniversary of the start of the war. This creates a number of problems.
The film features actors known for their participation in problematic Russian productions. Mark Eidelstein, playing Ivan, previously starred in Sasha's Country, a film shot in occupied Crimea and distributed by a company owned by Gazprom. The sensational Yuri Borisov, as Igor, played the title role in a production portraying Mikhail Kalashnikov, the creator of Russia's most famous weapon. This raises once again the question of whether democratic countries should be open to cooperation with Russian artists who have not completely disassociated themselves from Putin's Russia.
There have been voices among the Ukrainian diaspora in Europe that Anora - without denying the film's artistic merits - normalizes the image of Russia in the West, and the Palme d'Or at Cannes is proof of the West's fatigue with the topic of the war in Ukraine. Undoubtedly, the film, the awards for the production and the Russian actors taking part in it can be used to normalize the image of Russia in Western democracies.
