Despite what is branded across all of the marketing, despite what director Sean Baker himself states, and despite what the film’s tagline defines itself as (a modern love story), Anora is not a love story. It is not a glamorous romance. It is not a story that idealizes love in the context of a “rags to riches” story. It is not a fairytale — and that is where its brilliance lies.
Every trailer for the film insisted that this was a retelling of the classic, heartwarming story of the Disney princess Cinderella. It was to be a romantic tale of a young, gorgeous woman who had been dismissed, disdained, and denigrated, but against all odds finds love and connection with a prince. Obviously, the story was never going to be a cut-and-dry retelling of Cinderella; it was bound to subvert expectations and critique social conventions.
Sean Baker, director of The Florida Project, Red Rocket, and Tangerine, has never focused on the “pure and divine princesses” of our society. His films are often credited with “doing for sex workers what Martin Scorsese did for gangsters,” which is humanizing their characters and destigmatizing their archetype. Anora was meant to do the same. Its stated goal was to give the world a Disney princess who was also a sex worker, building upon the scaffolding Baker had already developed in his previous films, and to this extent it succeeds. But the genius of Anora does not emerge from its scathing and critical, yet very human, depiction of this “romantic” narrative arc, but instead from the way in which it subverts its established subversion.
The Happily Ever After
Anora can be broken down into two very distinct segments: the “love” story, and the “happily ever after.” The love story follows Ani, a twenty-three year old Russian-American erotic dancer, and in some cases sex worker, active in Brooklyn. In the opening scenes, she seems to find herself trapped in a world that echoes her own commodified sexuality, one in which her personal value is defined by her ability to successfully monetize the lust of her “clients.” However, things seem to take a turn for the better when she meets, and is “swept off her feet” by Ivan, the exorbitantly wealthy son of a notable Russian oligarch. The first major subversion of expectations arises as this budding “romance” is outlined.
The marketing campaign for the film displayed this relationship as the core of human connection and love within a cruel and corrupt world: the “Cinderella and her Prince Charming.” However, as their story progresses, no genuine romantic attraction appears; their relationship is based purely on the transaction of sex and money. They are doubtlessly fond of one another, but the traditional conventions of “love” are completely absent.
Nonetheless, their relationship heightens in seriousness during a series of chronological yet loosely connected scenes of the central romance, in which Ani’s sexuality and Ivan’s wealth are placed front and center, further cementing the theme that their relationship is fabricated, completely based on material inclinations. Even when they impulsively “fall in love” and marry in Vegas, as youths do, the relationship is purely symbiotic, not romantic.
This was not a Cinderella story, it was the story of a mutually beneficial relationship, which made me wonder: Is love simply symbiosis? It was not a far-fetched analysis, given it fell in line with themes Baker has previously approached. But still, it felt incomplete. There has to be human connection, right?
However, even if the Cinderella story itself was thematically bleak, it ended with the necessary “happily ever after.” It was a dreamy spectacle; no more, no less. But this is when the film’s next, and most notable subversion is revealed. Baker shows something that no Disney fairytale ever has:
The Day After the Happily Ever After
Baker has always strived to present his films as documentaries. He does not hope to portray a sense of interiority or even true intimacy. The role of the audience is simply just that, an audience. Audiences are spectating the lives of the central characters, not living in them. The structure of the film asserts this externality, as the story is displayed through a series of loosely-related scenes, each with significant gaps of development in between scenes.
In “Ani,” Baker continues this trend of externality. Viewers watch their frenetic and impulsive romance through a distant lens, never obscuring the truth, but just like a real documentary, failing to capture everything. It is a loose, thematically cohesive but structurally random, montage.
I am by no means disparaging this method of storytelling — it highlights the distance between the audience and the character and lends the character a uniquely human realness that might not be achieved if it was told as a traditional fairy-tale. But the lack of interiority does end up robbing the audience of a certain catharsis. A catharsis that we expect “should” be found in a fairytale. Which is why the tonal shift that develops this chasm between “Ani” to “Anora” is so crucial.
The transition from Ani to Anora is not insignificant; the movie, consisting solely of glimpses of scenes, comes to its inevitable romantic end. And with that conclusion, audiences, like our cynical yet sympathetic protagonist, are torn from that glamorous, dreamlike world, and thrust into a struggle to grasp onto remnants of that world. Brilliantly shifting from the aforementioned “photo album” of scenes that had comprised the romance, Baker pulls viewers into the interior of this world. He changes the presentation of the story from a documentary to a play, and with that paradigmatic shift, the real weight of “Anora” begins to build.
It is during this transition that the true genius of the film shines through, as Madison becomes a force of nature. The dream that had been meticulously crafted shatters as Anora is forced to once again commodify her sexuality and manipulate those around her to try and regain the life she had just achieved. With this, exhibited clearly for the entire audience to see, Baker’s intended rumination on love is revealed: it is a hustle.
Anora opened to absolutely glowing reviews from across the board, and at the sacrifice of individuality, I will be joining the masses; it is a darkly hilarious, deeply poignant, and bitingly subversive addition to Baker’s already strikingly good filmography (and currently his best film to date). I would be dishonest in claiming that the first segment, which I have titled “Ani,” is nearly as good as the longer, second segment, “Anora.” Its disjointed, documentary-esque structure and gratuitous sex (A potent yet nonetheless jarring feature of the film) often hold it back from soaring in the same way the latter half does.
But, nonetheless, I still must credit for the ways in which it improves the second half. “Ani’s” presentation of this dreamlike Pretty Woman tale, wrought with excess and depravity, provides a stark contrast that “Anora” ends up playing off of and eventually destroying entirely. Many of the beats, idiosyncrasies, and character arcs simply would have fallen flat without the presence of its somewhat lackluster (but still impressively executed) first act. Featuring outstanding cinematography that is evocative of a glamorous melancholy that weaves itself throughout the seams of the film, a brilliant and raw performance from Mikey Madison that brings the necessary interiority to the tragic protagonist, and just loads of style, Anora stands as the magnum opus of Baker’s filmography so far.
A searing tragedy, a humane parody, a morose epic, Anora encapsulates everything that makes Sean Baker one of the strongest working auteurs, and is easily one of the most exceptional and intimate pieces of art of the decade.
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