Anora
What a movie. Whilst it is explicit and it is sweary, it has unique selling points — character, story, pace, heart. Breaking your heart, leaving you in suspense and making you guffaw in equal measures, this is an extraordinary movie from Sean Baker.
In the style of Stephen Soderbergh mixed with Saturday Night Fever, we meet Anora (Mikey Madison) or Ani as she jauntily styles herself hustling, dealing with creepy and dumb men and their money as a exotic dancer, selling herself and being enticing. And yet she’s smart, almost a Trades Union rep for the other workers at the club. Through her work (and this most definitely is work as they take rest and lunch breaks), she encounters Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), a young, handsome, fun Russian guy and bizarrely they really like each other.
In a Pretty Woman move, he hires her to be his girlfriend for the week and enjoy his lavish party lifestyle as both ornament and entertainment. He seems to want her around, everywhere, all the time, to be exclusive with him. To the point that he suddenly, spontaneously, decides that they need to get married in Vegas, so that he can live off of his parents money forever and be an American citizen. And never have to join the family business.
Only things don’t quite work out happily ever after as news filters back to Mum and Dad in Russia. Cue Mum screaming down the phone at some local stooges who they send in to check on Vanya and his wife, and see what’s what. Even the name Galina Zakharova sounds terrifying. Cue local stooge and dapper dresser Toros (Karren Karagulian) sending in the babysitters to see what Vanya’s been up to. He even flees a christening to stop the wedding! Only he’s too late — and it’s very, very official. With a license, a ring and everything.
What develops is not what you’d expect. Played real time, Vanya flees. Left behind and unable to follow, Ani fights back, whilst at the same time being very vulnerable. Instead of focusing violence or brutality, the movie zones in on character. Although there’s still very real threat, their injuries are real too. One, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) nurses a broken nose and becomes inconveniently unwell at points. The other Igor (Yura Borisov) has a painful bite mark — and is a decent guy — he doesn’t want to hurt a woman. Or anyone. Or really be involved in any of this, hiding deeper and deeper inside his hood in embarrassment and boredom. This Igor isn’t Igorish at all. Ani ends up tied and gagged, because they can’t deal with being kicked, bitten and screamed at any more. Not because this is a movie which rejoices in women being brutalised or terrorised, or in violence.
In an unexpected twist, the four end up on a forced road trip, hunting for Vanya, who isn’t answering his phone and elusively leaves every location before he can be found. Mixing Russian, Armenian and English, cultures clash — and generations too. Ani continues to impress with her resourcefulness, intelligence and refusal to be slandered or belittled. Toros aims to unite Vanya and Ani, force an annulment and pay Ani off and out of their lives. No-one is behaving quite as you’d expect in this kind of movie. One of the stooges is clearly uncomfortable and tries to apologise for all the mayhem. Ani wants nothing to do with any of them. Igor has kindly even brought a scarf along in case she gets cold. Incredibly menacing and horrified by the destruction, Toros also ends up ranting about the youth of today and forces everyone to walk because parking spaces are hard to find. He berates one of his underlings about getting a parking ticket — ‘you had one job…’
They end up back where they started, but in very different circumstances. There’s a chaotic court scene, where they fail to annul the marriage and Ani works her use of English to her advantage. Then Vanya’s parents turn up. In a glorious battle of the coats, Ani and Vanya’s mother square up against each other — and the whole scene is played beautifully. Dragging everyone on their one-way private jet to Vegas, Vanya’s family start to reveal themselves — and perhaps Ani is better off out of it all. Vanya’s father (Aleksei Serebryakov) finds it all hilarious as mother and son rebuke each other in furious sweary Russian. Rising above, Anora retains her honour, her dignity, simmering furiously as those around her behave dishonourably. Most of all she begins to impress the reluctant stooge and fundamentally decent guy Igor with her courage and self-respect.
Yura Borisov plays a terrific moment where Ani asks Igor why he didn’t rape her. The bewilderment and horror shooting across his face, the disbelief, incredulity and repugnance is everything. He’s an honourable guy — he didn’t want her to hurt herself or others, he honours the humanity in others. He wouldn’t even think about raping — it’s abhorrent. Which tells us everything about Ani’s transactional world and what happens in it, and Igor’s heart.
In a unique moment, Ani perhaps tries to replace Vanya with Igor, to use physicality and sex to connect. However, Igor wants to connect emotionally, tenderly throughout and Ani can’t take it. It breaks her and as she collapses into heart rending sobs, Igor cradles her protectively — fundamentally he cares about her. Just as he respects his grandmother’s apartment and wouldn’t drug deal from it. An honourable guy, he contrasts with Vanya, who was full of worldly honour, words and gestures, but put his own needs and pleasures first, always. Smashing stereotypes, Igor sees Anora, the powerful meanings of her name, who she is and admires her for it, loves her, honours her. Vanya was always more about convenience, about what she could do, not who she was.
For a mobster movie, it’s tender and character driven. For a movie about sex workers, it’s compassionate and very real time. Showgirls this is not. We see the risks as well as the ridiculousness. It’s also about the small things — such as the scars Anora gets during a fight which are shown healing, real time. As her make-up falls away, we see more and more of the warrior she is. Just like her name, this is fundamentally a movie about honour, and resonating with Small Things Like These, who is worthy of notice, of being seen and valued, of being honourable and honoured.
Enjoy it too for the laughs — it’s very, very funny in parts. For the impressive tension sustained across scenes where the actors are talking over each other, often in multiple languages — and for Anora, screaming over everyone else. The writing’s really something as just when you think it’s going to go into typical fighty bashy crashy violence, the tension ramps up and keeps going. Equally lyrical is Drew Daniels’s cinematography using visuals to really show us the characters, such as Toros’s pristine sharply cut coat and his personal horror at yet another Vanya clean-up exercise.
Darya Ekamasova as Vanya’s Mum chews the scenery wonderfully, posturing and sneering with rage, while Vanya’s Dad, the mighty Nikolai Zakharov, snickers in the background. Pity the poor registrar who gets pens and coats thrown at her. Meanwhile, Igor keeps on keeping on trying to be a decent guy — his awkward reactions are terrific as a regular guy trapped in a mobster stooge role and really not happy about it. Great too are the normal reactions of the friends to being quizzed and threatened by pushy mobster stooges. And enjoy the soundtrack which is wonderfully incorporated into the scenes.