Anora’s triple victory at the Oscars this morning came as no surprise to those who have seen the film. Anora is the kind of rare precious raw and visceral film that has no patience with conventional storytelling. This is not the first film in which American director Sean Baker has deep-dived into the life of a sex worker. His 2015 gem Tangerine followed the life of transgender sex worker. Baker’s Red Rocket was about an aging porn star.
Baker’s best work Florida Project trailed a bright 6-year of modest means Moonee through her summer adventures. In Anora Baker’s latest and presumably best work (I am not too sure if it is superior to The Florida Project, but it is in close competition) the heroine is a spunky material girl – a bar dancer and a sex worker named Anora, played with a high-strung fidelity by Mikey Madison.
When the flamboyant, feelingly fetching film opens we are shown multiple montages of Anora enjoying her sex time with various clients. There is no angst or poignancy about Anora’s vocation which like an extended vacation for Anora.
Once she meets the immature Russian heir Vanya( Mark Eydelshteyn) the smitten rich brat offers to buy her exclusive services for a week. So if you think this is the Pretty Woman of the digital age, you have another think coming.
Far from romanticising Anora’s life in the lap of luxury (if that’s what you want to call the moneyed Russian who claims to be 21 but looks 17) Anora pans out into something else, something far more excruciating and revealing than the Cinderella variation that it initially seems to be.
The main body of the narration is about two hired goons – calling them assassins would be too flattering considering no one gets killed and considering how soft one of the goons gets on Anora – trying their best to get Anora unmarried .
The mood swings in Sean Baker’s writing are both fascinating and frightening. Baker plays havoc with our comfort level. Is this a comedy? Because a lot of what happens to Anora is pure burlesque. Goons inveigle her marriage and home, hold her hostage intimidate her. The threat seems real (Russian mafia, for God’s sake!). But somehow no real harm comes to Anora. She is tougher than we imagine her to be, and she proves it, except when she breaks down at the end when we have to sadly, leave her.
Anora, the woman making her way through a world where you are as good as your last pole dance, is a meteor, a force of nature and a slice of the wide open sky. Mikey Madison plays Anora as a child of destiny who won’t be slotted as a suffering slut. Anora’s tumultuous marriage to the Russian child-man gives her more strength to fight. The more she is bullied the less Anora would be compromised.
It is hinted at the end that Anora may have a life ahead with the goon Igor (Yura Borisov) who was hired to decimate her marriage without breaking anything. I would love to see more of Anora. Played by the mercurial Mikey Madison, Anora is irresistible. And totally Oscar-worthy, far more so than the other Oscar favourite Demi Moore who seems to have been nominated for The Substance only because this seemed like her last stab at getting there.
