Anora tells the foreboding tale of a whirlwind hypergamous romance between the titular character Anora (Mikey Madison) and her Russian lover Vanya (Mark Eidelstein). Kind-eyed and tinsel-haired Anora is a third-generation Uzbek American who resides in Brooklyn’s highly Eurasian Brighton Beach neighbourhood and works as a stripper at a local club. Vanya is the spoiled, frivolous son of an ultra-rich Russian family. He is an inveterate playboy with scads of family money and a delinquent attitude who dresses either in logomania athleisure or a slouchy, Vetements-esque uniform. Young, beautiful women spin around him like a carousel. 

The two meet when Vanya patronizes Anora at her workplace. Vanya hires Anora as an escort and eventually proposes that the two get married on a trip to Las Vegas. Naively, she accepts. When word of the unsavoury union reaches Vanya’s parents in Russia, they send their bumbling underworld goons to the newlyweds’ Brooklyn residence to force an annulment by any means necessary. Vanya flees upon their arrival, leaving Anora to be beaten and detained. The henchmen then cart her around New York City in search of her husband with the goal of vitiating the marriage contract before Vanya’s parents furiously descend upon the city.

Upon her arrival, Vanya’s mother Galina (Daria Ekamasova) counsels Anora, who wants to remain married, against legal recourse. Galina threatens to ruin Anora’s life as well as the lives of those around her should the young bride retain a divorce lawyer. Vanya cowardly acquiesces to his parents demands for annulment, and later reveals to Anora that he perceived her as a plaything who could help make his last trip to America especially memorable. He disposes of his wife as one would of a used tissue paper. After the annulment is signed, Anora is delivered by the so-called gopnik (Russian term for what in Canada we might call “white trash”) to the home she shares with her sister, and he reveals himself to be her prole ally by offering her back her multiple carat wedding ring. Reflexively, Anora offers her gratitude in the form of sex. As the two begin to kiss, she suddenly recoils to scream in protest. The gopnik is confused but accepts her rejection and holds her head to his breast as she cries in exhaustion. 

Sean Baker is a genius for ending the film on such a disquieting note. It is not necessarily that Anora proffers sex to the gopnik that is disturbing, but rather the message that her interpretation of the gopnik’s desire sends. The film expertly evaluates how difficult it is for young women to be truly sexually free when they are trapped both by the imposition of a monetary value on their physicality (whether escort or not) and their eternal subjectivity in the realm of male fantasy. Anora reminds us that just because one desires to flaunt sex, whether for money or leisure, it does not mean that one is ready for the resultant consequences. Anora is a film that is warmly contemplative of feminine desire and critical of those who accept the rhetoric of sex work girlbossery so superficially.

A Baker cast never disappoints and Anora is no exception. Eideilstein infuriates as the foppish, pussyfooting Vanya while Madison enraptures as the plucky, street-smart Anora. Through the young couple’s marriage, the feature displays the emotional destitution of the archetypal ultra-rich manchild who wantonly throws money at anything that tenuously entertains him. But, when the entertainment stops, the well dries. How unnerving it is that the world’s most mercurial are those who also have ultimate economic power!

With Anora, Sean Baker has produced a watch that is sexy, harrowing, and eye-popping all at once— think Showgirls meets Uncut Gems. It raises questions about issues that are all too current. What kind of psychological damage does the sale of one’s sex cause? What part of the self dies or is alienated through that work? How does the relationship between the genders proceed in good faith in a milieu that bounces between rage-baiting inceldom and girlboss/manosphere content? Is one’s class truly immutable? Thankfully, relief from the intensity of these notions is found in the foolishness of the henchmen and the goofy earnestness of Vanya’s friend Crystal, played by New York City’s comedy darling Ivy Wolk. Overall, Sean Baker’s Anora is well-acted, well-shot, and thematically rich.