anora + being realistic
film review (with spoilers)/personal stress
Last night/early hours, I watched Anora (2024, dir. Sean Baker for the first time). Before I watched it, I assumed that the film was going to show an oddly successful romance between a sex worker and her employer that would last a few months to a year and then issues would arise, the family would come and things would fall apart. Maybe ‘Pretty Woman’ and my own romantic nature had influenced me. I always leaned towards the more romantic characters in media - Rosetta, Aphrodite, both Ariel’s from The Little Mermaid, Manny Santos, Yvaine from Stardust, the list goes on…I hoped it’d be something like that. Then again, I’ve never watched a Sean Baker film to see whether that’d be his thing. The edits I had seen of the film also didn’t seem to reveal much. I saw video or picture after picture spliced together of Vanya and Annie, a few side by sides of Annie looking at the window in what seemed like polar opposite months and Annie dancing sensually to ‘Gogo Dancer’ by Lana Del Rey. The film destroyed these assumptions for me.
My Letterboxd Rating for the film: 4/5 stars
My Letterboxd Rating I left (hailcastle):
Before watching, I genuinely thought it was going to be some kind of ‘love story’ where they stay together for a year and then everything kicks off. It was not, and the fact that I thought that when he literally met her because of a party experience he would be exploiting her is crazy. The fact Annie believed that she knew him, truly knew him, after a few weeks and constantly defended him when evidence against the character she created for him was being tarnished was really sad to watch because I don’t know many other women who wouldn’t do the same. You really don’t know a man until he’s in trouble.
The beginning of the film started by establishing setting. A strip/exotic dancing club or HQ. Mikey Madison’s character Annie, along with her other coworkers, are in their working element. Baker decides to run through glimpses of what a day in the life of work is like for Annie. The conversations between her and the men she is performing for is a performance in itself. These men are completely convinced that some sort of connection is being made. They share their work worries and express their hopes that their families don’t see them there, only for one to actually verbally critique Annie’s sense of moral judgement for working there…despite financing the very institution that he judges her for. Annie plays along in order to get paid, as she should. But behind their backs and with her coworker/bestie, they’re sharing how ridiculous they find these men. One admitted to Lulu that he looked like his daughter and paid for multiple private dances with her. I enjoyed the contrast of conversation. What I think could’ve been improved is more overlapping of speech. What both characters were saying felt humorous and if I were to direct, I’d have had a few moments of laughter mid speech, some ‘no, you go first’ or ‘what?’s to make it feel a little more natural. Or at least to show just how close they were. But that’s just me. Baker does use contrasts very well because seeing Annie’s work life and then panning to her on the train and back at home, it’s a very bleak picture. The music has ended and she’s just some random girl in a shitty house. Life seems to brighten up so much more when she’s away.
Going to Vanya’s house quickly becomes a substitute for Annie’s actual work life. The longer that he pays for her time, the less her actions become a performance towards him and closer to something genuine. At his party he invites her to, they have sex and it’s implied it’s the first time that isn’t paid for. Then, all of a sudden, he’s her girlfriend for the week. Because of the nature of Annie’s isolation within her relationships and the individualistic nature of her job, nobody critiques this or asks what the fuck is happening. Her roommate questions why she’ll be going for a week but doesn’t chase it up, implying that’s the norm of their relationship. Annie comes and goes, she asks Annie to do household chores, Annie does whatever the fuck she wants. But Annie is not invincible. Mikey Madison does a great job at portraying a woman who, despite what you may assume, truly cares a lot. The people that she meets for a week aren’t just people she’s being hired to chill with for her. Even early into her employment for Vanya, she asks questions that she doesn’t have to. She wants him to get his money’s worth, wants to know how he affords this lifestyle and puts herself in positions constantly to get to know him better. When he offers to get married to stay in the US, it doesn’t cross her mind to question his reasoning or his planning skills. Her main concern is him teasing her with the prospect of a better life. Once he seems to genuinely be offering it to her, she jumps at the chance.
Their marriage is impulsive, casual and the cinematography was great. The camera spins as Vanya yells out to anyone who can hear ‘This is my wife!!!’ and Annie is elated to say that she has a husband. Getting her ring, her beautiful coat that I am looking for (I LOVE a fur coat DOWN), leaving her job all has a fairytale feel. There is a tenderness between the sex scenes and the moments in the house with Vanya. Yet his routine continues. Party. Game. Fuck. Sleep. Party. Game. Fuck. Sleep. PGFS. PGFS. Fuck. Fuck. Game. Game. Getting away from his game to have an honest conversation with his wife is a struggle. As Annie assimilates into a wife role, she whispers and lulls a lot more Russian, despite first being insecure at her skills in the language. Because of its roots in how she understood her grandmother, it feels like every time she speaks it for him, it is a literal love language. She is speaking lovingly in a language for her love. But Vanya is constantly more concerned at being able to keep this aloof lifestyle, to the point he shuts down her concerns about his parents possibly not knowing they got married and Anora offers sex to alleviate tension the only way she knows how. Despite the ‘security’ of their marriage, she still feels that sex is the only way to resolve fights with this man child.
The actor for Vanya, Mark Eidelstein, is great at showing this aloof personality. There are very few moments that he stands up for his wife and they are all very clearly a façade or poor attempt at bravado that Annie is in too deep to see. The only reason why he seems to stand up for her on the phone is because he’s talking to his father’s subordinates. Not his father. In front of his parents, he very quickly shows how easily he can shut up because his lifestyle isn’t his. Toros is just an unfortunate worker made to clean up his messes. Though Garrick, Ivan and Toros manhandle Annie and show that they’re not great at handling Vanya, they are the only ones to illuminate to Annie the truth about him. They don’t take her profession and his so called ‘love’ for her seriously because it’s clear he has a tendency to hire girls. He just happened to like Annie a little more than the others, but once he’s drunk enough, he’s right back to HQ and Diamond (hater) jumps at the chance to fuck him. When Annie’s told that even the bed they fuck in is his parents and his room is some childish display, she refuses to believe it. His whole life is being financed by his parents and Vanya truly has nothing. He is a child. Like a child, he runs away and doesn’t have any understanding of consequence until his parents come to pick him up. Annie thinks it’s a matter of his parents being the issue and Vanya not having the room to be his own man, but her meeting with his mother shows it just isn’t the case.
Annie is more than polite when she meets his mother. She takes a leap and decides to speak Russian to her. She truly wants to be a part of this family and to reason. Her sense of reasoning skills is shown a lot because she doesn’t rush to fight in interactions until she feels she has no choice. When it looks like words will get through, she uses her words. She quickly adjusts her tone when in front of a judge. She is, at her core, a polite person. She treats Vanya’s mother with that same kindness and what does she get? Told she will never be a part of ‘this family, ridiculed for her Russian and told, once again, that her marriage doesn’t mean shit to these people. Her marriage is such a disgrace in their eyes that they won’t even let her win a legal battle. They are content with letting the very little family and possessions she has burn in order to show her that they are better than her. Even the people hired to sabotage her feel sorry for her. Toros still proposes that she gets a fee for her time, although 10k isn’t near enough to pay for the emotional damage of the ordeal. Ivan tries his best to treat her with kindness, keeping her warm and avoiding her hurting herself. Once Annie throws her fur coat from Vanya away, she seems truly done with him. Until Ivan gives her the ring.
Ivan is one of the few characters to have a genuine conversation with Annie. In these conversations and interactions, he is honest, even if it means he will embarrass himself. He doesn’t try and have sex with her because he clearly wants more. Annie is so used to men faking genuine connection with her in order to moralise their choices that Ivan has to have something wrong with him. It’s sad because with how she’s been treated, how else can she feel? She took a chance with Vanya for a Cinderella story and look where it ended her up. In an attempt to resolve tension with Ivan, she resorts to sex how she did with Vanya, but it doesn’t work because Ivan is not in a transactional mindset in the same way. He reaches to kiss her because it’s what he feels is safe to do with her. It ends with Annie in tears at her loss of control and Ivan hugging her. I felt very empty watching the last scene because there was nothing to distract Annie from the reality of her situation. In or out of the car, all she has is her shitty house and a ring reminding her of the Cinderella story she lost and may never have again.
The film made me think about my own struggles being realistic when presented with something too good to be true.
When I was around 13 years old, I ended a long time habit of imagining conversations going the way I hoped they would and, instead, based on what I had been presented in the character of the person.
Around this age, I found myself in more and more arguments with my mum. A lot of the time, I didn’t understand why they were happening. I would try to dress myself instead of get into her matching outfits she bought for me and my 8 year old sister, only to be met with ridicule. ‘The shoes don’t match’ or ‘This is why I dress you myself’ would be the main reasonings. I wasn’t dressed inappropriately. I would be covered head to toe, sometimes with a jacket included. I was also questioned a lot about my line of thinking. If I had a day out or went to a new food place and didn’t get her something, I was called selfish almost immediately. These arguments, once I got the courage to fight against these brandishes on my character, only escalated on her end. Before I knew it, I was shocked when she was calling me names. Before our arguments, I would imagine how she would respond to me. I imagined being in front of her, telling her that what she said hurt me and her telling me that she was sorry. That she had been tearing herself up at how she spoke to me and she was apologising now. Some days, I even imagined getting an affectionate hug from her. But then one day, I decided to measure my expected responses with what she had given me. We were arguing and I said word for word what she would say. She looked at me like she had seen a ghost and walked off. I then went to school and continued this line of judgement for future arguments with anyone. It worked for a while.
Until it didn’t.
I had an issue with a guy I was seeing. I presented it to him. I expected an argument. He said ‘okay’ and rectified it each time. I got comfortable. Whenever we had an issue, I got an explanation why something happened and it went. I didn’t see why I should be guarded because I was given no reason to. The last time we saw each other, we were lying next to each other and he basically told me his life story. I was amazed at his personal ambition, his perseverance and his lack of care for what others say to him. He kept telling me there would be a next time with him and I had no reason to doubt him. Or did I? I keep thinking about our conversations and he said himself that when he doesn’t want to hear or confront something, he blanks it out. I asked if I had ever said anything he didn’t want to hear. He said he didn’t remember because he probably blanked it out. All it took was a few fun times with a rich guy and I forgot how to measure my responses, measure actions, as I struggled to at first with my mum.
I’m not mad at myself for believing in the better version of my mum or this guy in my head. In fact, quite the opposite. I’m happy that my character prioritizes seeing the good in people. I love that I still have hope and I am still optimistic, despite my efforts to be realistic, when I navigate the world. It isn’t my fault that it isn’t what some of the people I know actually are. One day, they will be. I am still a firm believer of ‘you can’t do the wrong things with the right person’ and I’ll continue to believe that. But like Annie in the car of the final scene of Anora, it does make me emotional thinking about when. If my Cinderella story isn’t happening now, when will it? Will I just have a reminder of what could’ve been and move on? What do I do now that I’m back to a reality that I’m not satisfied with? Just keep moving.
Anora (2024) was truly a film for the romantics of the world, like myself, who suppress their inner romantic because the world shows them differently. I hope that we are able to find that genuine, long lasting romance that we wish for. There is more for us. To my romantics reading, I love you and we will be okay.
-Halle