NOTE: This review contains spoilers
In his latest film, Anora, director Sean Baker has broken through from indie credibility to mainstream success with a frenetic look at the layer of American workers that toil amongst the ultra-rich, doing their dirty work and cleaning up their messes. While the camera follows the arc of the title character, it lingers on the maids, hotel concierges, exotic dancers, and hired goons who bear witness to the realities of 21st-century income inequality. Through the protagonist (and audience proxy), exotic dancer Anora, we wrestle with the hope we cannot seem to give up that maybe, if we play our cards right, we can gain access to the world of luxury and ease inhabited by people no better than us.
As soon as we meet Anora (Mikey Madison), it becomes clear that she is an able and confident worker. Her job involves both physical and emotional labor that she navigates easily. Baker aims a nonjudgmental lens at the club where Anora works; the lighting is warm and sensual and the shots that linger on the dancers are sexy but not prurient or seedy. Anora’s club is a classy establishment that serves high-value clients, and Anora is assigned to Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch. What follows –flirting and touching, listening and laughing, deep stares – could look, from a distance, like two people falling in love; but those of us who have worked in the service industry know that performance is what we are paid for.
When Ivan invites her to spend a week with him, it is a professional achievement more than a romantic one for Anora. She maintains her power and sets boundaries even as she enjoys the work and the perks, which include lavish parties and designer drugs. She dances for Ivan and holds him while he plays video games because her job is to fulfill the full range of his desires for companionship. They fly to Las Vegas and visit parts of it only seen by the ultra-rich, and when Ivan ‘jokingly’ screams at a hotel concierge, Anora laughs along with him — as does the concierge, because they both serve at his pleasure.
When Ivan asks her to marry him, it is again proof of her skill at the job of companionship. The transactional nature of the proposal couldn’t be more clearly spelled out (she gets a ring, he gets a green card), yet we are all so wrapped up in the performance of romance and the ecstasy of a decadent lifestyle that it kind of feels like love.
Then, as they always do, the drugs wear off, and reality sets in.
In the back half of the film, we meet a new set of characters and shift back into the world of people who must make a living doing what someone tells them to do. When word starts getting around that Ivan has married a ‘prostitute’, the fragile plans that he and Anora made during their honeymoon period immediately disintegrates. Men hired by Ivan’s family to keep an eye on him come knocking, and Ivan bolts, leaving her to (impressively) resist them until it becomes clear that she must ally with them to try to track him down. When they physically assault and restrain her, it is with visible reluctance and shame. These hired strongmen, especially the one who seems to be the sole caregiver to his grandmother, are driven by the paychecks they rely on, but also by the knowledge that their bosses are so powerful that disobedience could be punished with the destruction of their professional and personal lives.
This looming power haunts the whole sad crew as they embark on an involuntary tour of Ivan’s favorite hangouts, wreaking havoc through their pursuit. The next hour of the film unfolds with a manic but humorous energy comparable to the Safdie Brothers film Good Time. Baker’s pacing pulls us from location to location with the driving force of economic anxiety, but skillfully inserts moments of humor and humanity.
While the goons are fully aware from the outset that they are in a race for their lives, it only dawns on Anora slowly, piece by piece, as she comes to realize that any expectations she had of becoming part of Ivan’s family was a complete fantasy. After dozens of ignored calls and the ransacking of a candy shop, she realizes that Ivan is not a person she can rely on in even the most basic sense. Following a fight at the club where she met him, it becomes clear that he is a pathetic, dependent child completely unable to escape the authority of his parents. When Ivan’s mother (Darya Ekamasova) tells Anora that if she does not give him a divorce, they will destroy her life and the life of everyone she knows, she is just putting words to the feelings we have felt for the whole film. In a system where money buys power, the ultra-rich can make us all do whatever they want.
On her last night in the mansion she allowed herself to believe was hers, Anora attempts to restore some sense of her own power by belittling Igor (Yura Borisov), the henchman who has never stopped trying to show her his humanity. Anora is telling the truth when she calls him a thug and a kidnapper, but even as she says it, she knows that he, too, was just doing his job. They recognize each other as workers.
The next day, Igor drops her off, carrying her bags to the door in a way that would never even occur to Ivan. When he gives her back her engagement ring — in a much less transactional way than when she first receives it — her instinct is to make good on his investment with her body. She responds with a sexual advance, because for her, the line between transactional sex and genuine attraction is even more blurred than it is for most women. In a moment when rejection would hurt her but enthusiasm would compromise her, Igor just lets things happen. His passivity is a sign of his care and a continuation of his efforts to support her that has been built up over the course of the film.
In that moment, Anora struggles against her attraction to him. It is a response to what he has done to her, but also to the prospect of attaching herself to who she sees as a man of low status, as opposed to the elite husband she just lost. Their final encounter triggers an emotional release, and she breaks down when her need to be vulnerable momentarily overcomes her instinct to stay strong. This isn’t love any more than her relationship with Ivan was, but it is at least something real.
Anora is a movie with a sad ending, but it’s not a tragedy. It’s a movie about failing to achieve the American dream, but it’s not the story of a woman defeated. It’s about realizing that who gets to have money and who doesn’t is based not on merit or skill, but rather on luck and ruthlessness. Anora gets a taste of this unreal world, where power and pleasure are limitless. For an interloper like her, though, it has hard limits; it’s a sugar rush followed immediately by a crash. Because she is 25, this experience, though traumatizing, will fade; it isn’t the end for her, but a painful lesson that we all learn at some point.
The majority of American workers hold out hope that something will happen to ensure they won’t have to work anymore. This can be seen in the rise of sports betting, crypto prospecting, and voting for a presidential candidate who promises to magically make groceries cheaper. Anyone can see that those who work the hardest in our society tend to get paid the least, while a small minority at the top have nothing but time and endless resources; so why would anyone want to work hard? Unfortunately, none of us will be pulled out of a life of toil by a generous billionaire because the generous billionaire is a myth. For most of us, no amount of savvy speculation or cozying up to rich boys will ever get us into that stratospheric level of wealth.
Instead, we have to work — not only at the wage jobs that keep food on the table, but at building working-class organizations to contest the power of the billionaire class. It sucks. It is nothing but the promise of hard work forever. But building something with our fellow workers is the only way out of this mess, and there is the potential to find dignity in the work we do, despite the scorn for hard work inculcated by capitalist culture. Sean Baker’s direction and editing allow us, the audience, to see the work of Anora and her coworkers for what it is: the provision of a service by professionals. By adopting this perspective, not only nonjudgmental but celebratory, on the work of exotic dancers, Baker opens the door for us to rediscover the dignity in the physical and emotional labor we all do.
