“Anora” (2024), Palme D’Or winner of the 77th Cannes Film Festival, is American director Sean Baker’s latest film about Ani (Mikey Madison), government name Anora Mikheeva, an Uzbek American Russian speaking escort who meets Ivan Zakharov (Mark Eydeldhteyn) at a Manhattan gentlemen’s club, Headquarters-KONY. Ivan invites her to his place, and afterwards, he offers $15,000.00 to spend a week with him. When the seven days pass, he proposes, she accepts, and they live happily ever after until the news reaches his parents in Russia. Ivan’s godfather, derisively called the Armenian, Toros (Karren Karagulian), Toros’ little brother and right-hand man, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan), and their muscle, Igor (Yura Borisov), must fix the situation before Ivan’s parents’ private jet touches American soil. Ani, are you ok?
Baker is one of the great living American directors. He elevates marginalized people into the spotlight, but what goes up, must come down, and a harsh wakeup call follows any brief respite from the daily grind. The trick is that Baker gets a moviegoer to root for and empathize with people engaged in professions that would otherwise be dehumanized. He balances on a tightrope never falling into fetishization, but also laughing at the unspoken rules and dynamics that govern these tenebrous sections of society. It helps that he is not mean-spirited and roots for his three-dimensional underdogs, the protagonist and the rest of the characters. Everyone has full three-dimensional lives that feel that exist before the movie begins and long after the credits stop rolling.
Ani is a young woman who knows the score and is unfailingly sweet at work to all the paying customers and most of her coworkers though she is not afraid to stick up for herself. The longer that she is off the clock, like when she is taking a break to eat, the more she returns to herself, a sharp-tongued woman whose bark is a defense mechanism with a shorter than necessary efficacy in protecting her, which is how she winds up with Ivan, who also goes by Vanya. As he sweeps her away on a dizzying montage of sex, partying and playing, she drapes herself over him and clings to him as if he had broad shoulders, but he is still a thin whisp of a fellow in mind and body. Madison delivers one of those performances that makes it impossible to remember that she is acting.
Ivan could be a nightmare considering that he has a ton of money at his disposal, and his parents are not home. Men and boys with less privilege have done worse, but he is like a kid hopped up on sugar. He is self-aware enough to know how people like him normally act, and he does a convincing impression when he arrives at a Las Vegas hotel where the concierge nervously hops to attention and is eager to please. Ivan switches gears to indicate that he is teasing. He may want things his way, but he is unwilling to do more than do an impression of a spoiled kid to push his agenda. Instead, he is largely harmless, knows the name of the people who serve him and is good-natured. It is easy to see why Ani acts like his wife. She believes his words. Maybe it is the broken English or his physicality, but Eidelshtein brings an innocence to his dissolute playboy then knows how to gradually dim his light, which a lesser actor like Tobey Maguire would use as an opportunity to veer wildly and clumsily to the opposite end of the spectrum. If he was a F. Scott Fitzgerald character, he would be likeable despite his carelessness.
When Garnick and Igor interrupt their marital domestic bliss, Ani interprets their appearance as employees going rogue and conducting a home invasion. Her hackles are up because they call her hooker, prostitute and whore. These men are so accustomed to being obeyed either out of fear or their employers’ reputation that they are surprised when Ani does not acquiesce to their instructions. Baker plays it for laughs, and even though the scenario is inherently problematic, the humor lands on firm ground. The scenario is problematic because sympathies shift slightly to the beleaguered Garnick and Igor as Ani rightfully engages in the fight of her life. More respectable beautiful brunettes turn up dead with zero consequences, yet Baker leverages the crazy woman trope and frames these guys as helpless, which is the unfortunately comfortable prevalent rationale in this country—to make accusations of rape seem exaggerated and cast guys as the real victims of sexually suspect women either to their false accusations or in this case, their reluctance to physically harm her. It is a testament to Ani’s spirit and the way that Borisov and Tovmasyan can seem safe by not showing an ounce of a lecherous eye that Baker pulls off the humor and makes Ani into an indomitable warrior though they eventually overpower her. They are all business, no rapists here. Later, when they are interrogating a couple of Ivan’s friends, Igor finally seems relaxed when he can finally choose violence and goes to town with a baseball bat.
Even though the three men are far from wise, Toros is not afraid to engage in a little psychological harm. Lack of sleep, freedom of movement and respect for her station as the wife of their boss makes Ani more compliant as they jump boroughs to go on an extended scavenger hunt to reverse the Las Vegas nuptials. Watching Ani gradually realize that all her defiance and sweetness may be inadequate to secure her position is devastating though there are still plenty of laughs until the last scene. As they encounter Ivan’s past associates, Baker shows Ivan’s friends in their natural environment. They are working class. Like Ani, the audience will realize that even though we have accompanied the couple on countless adventures for an extended period, no one knows Ivan. A true wife would know her husband’s habits. Igor emerges as a silent witness to her pain while the other two are more stressed about getting in trouble with their boss. Borisov, who was memorable and unique in “Compartment Number 6” (2021), has a talent for playing men whose sensitivity is disproportionate to their rough exterior. He works for Toros, but his loyalty lies with Ani.
“Anora” is ultimately a story about immigrants and the divide between the diaspora and the natives. Ani begins the film refusing to speak Russian, but with Ivan, she is willing to be more vulnerable, reach into a never outlined past that must be filled with pain to unearth that language and speak it to him. While money is a motivating factor, her willingness to speak and his reassurances brought out another side of her. Let’s not forget that the message of “Arrival” (2016) was that language is associated with memories and shapes our minds, lives and bodies. Ani has a distant, tenuous relationship with her family. Her grandmother was likely the first immigrant to leave Uzbekistan, a former Soviet Union member though they initially resisted the Bolsheviks. People do not leave their homeland because life is perfect. Perhaps there is an unspoken trauma, and a colonialist vibe to the relationship with Russians? So, Ivan becomes another way to heal the source of this unspoken wound that she has with her origins regardless of whether it is a generational trauma. So, Ivan’s family’s acceptance is not just about not wanting to go back to a hard life, but finally achieving acceptance that her ancestors did not have and become the family that she does not have. She gets lumped with the other people who are less than Russian: the Armenians, the gopnik-a Russian of working-class background or a delinquent. It is not just about the disgrace of her profession, but not being Russian, being conquered and unable to rest in Russian spaces. Ivan’s home is not just about money, but repatriation.
A lot of movies feel as if they are in dire need of more editing to shorten the length or fail to stick the landing, but “Anora” has neither of these problems. The runtime is a brisk two hours nineteen minutes. The last scene packs an unexpected gut punch that gives us what we want and need. A lot of filmmakers do not understand the value of catharsis or that they are building up to a crescendo, but Baker gets it. Unlike acolytes like Todd Phillips, Baker understands that the lowest point in a person’s life does not have to mean the end of a person’s life. Life does not let people get off the hook that easily. People move on, and Baker knows how to provide a resolution yet leave enough ambiguity to feel anchored in authenticity.
