Anora
Rating
Director
Sean Baker
Screenplay
Sean Baker
Length
2h 19m
Starring
Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Aleksei Serebryakov, Darya Ekamasova, Lindsey Normington
MPAA Rating
R
Original Preview
Review
Where is the line between representation and exploitation. Anora comes down on one side of the line but only barely.
Working as a stripper in a Brighton Beach strip club, Anora (Mikey Madison) has high dreams and aspirations but faces the reality that she might never be appreciated for anything but her body. When a Russian playboy (Mark Eydelshteyn) pays her to have sex with him, their connection leads to a series of encounters that ultimately result in their drunken marriage in Las Vegas. His caretaker, an Armenian-American priest (Karren Karagulian), hears rumor of his nuptials and moves heaven-and-earth to break up the pair, with the boy’s conservative Russian parents deeming the embarrassment of a son marrying a “hooker” a horror and diverting their plans to arrive in the U.S. to take over the situation. In the interim, the priest and two thugs (Yura Borisov and Vache Tovmasyan) try to force them to divorce while the playboy goes into hiding to avoid responsibility for his actions.
Anora features a fairly straight forward narrative that is overpopulated with thematic templates and an abundance of dialogue that doesn’t always make sense. There’s a darkly comic element to the story but it’s too often subsumed by the predictable cinematic beats. Madison is a strong actor and she gives a varied performance but it’s superficial at times with her accent overwhelming her credibility. While we ultimately delight in the few successes she achieves, the Armenian characters foil a lot of our sympathy for her by giving off a Keystone Kops vibe to their incapability. The menace that the audience could have sympathetically felt for Anora is put entirely on the shoulders of man-of-few-words Borisov who manages to give the film’s most layered and compelling performance.
While many films prefer to tackle lofty subjects, some tuck that idealism into the essence of a character without making it an obvious element. Anora wants the audience to empathize with its title character and acknowledge her difficulties on the periphery of society. She has limited prospects, internal struggles, and a desire to maintain a form of dignity against a society that deems her less because she sells her body for money. It’s in this foundation that the film’s representational aspirations ultimately succeed. The playboy doesn’t really respect her but wants to maintain his emotional hold on her until the last possible moment. Whether he intends it as a rebuke to his parents or belies his immaturity is left up to the viewer to decide. When the parents finally arrive, their villainy becomes plain and that bolsters the idea in their mind that because she is a sex worker that she somehow doesn’t deserve respect.
Where the film edges towards exploitation is in its unnecessary moments of sexual gratuitousness. Not precisely explicit, the topless dancing and gyrating is given unnecessary attention. It’s possible to use nudity tastefully and there’s a point to be made about our society’s puritanical view of sex but the lengths to which Baker goes to sensationalize and titillate undermine his more ambitious ideals.
The superlative performance of Borisov and the solid if sometimes grating work of Madison help keep the film from teetering into unbelievability. The pace works well and that end scene in the car outside Anora’s apartment is cinematic perfection but Anora the film is too full of flaws to be more than a forgettable flick.
Review Written
March 18, 2025
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