At times, Anora comes across like a movie designed to attract the extremely online crowd, much in the same way as Charli XCX's Brat, or Greta Gerwig's Barbie, or the Safdies' Uncut Gems all did. It has all of social media's favorite thematic elements: sex work, wealth and excess, class commentary, hot people, "bisexual lighting," Tumblr-baiting images. It's hard not to feel a little cynical when a movie so readily, gleefully plays the hits, though perhaps that is the point—the late-millennial/Gen Z cheese to lure in that audience and trap them into its fable about the limits of transactional fantasies.
As the latest film from Sean Baker, director of movies like The Florida Project, Tangerine, and Red Rocket, Anora could be seen as the culmination of his career-long artistic thesis on sex work, class struggle, and the perils of late capitalism. Mikey Madison stars as the titular Anora, a 21st-century Cinderella living in Brooklyn as a struggling sex worker. One day, into her strip club walks Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eidelstein), a 23-year-old Timothée Chalamet stand-in who might as well still be 15. Vanya, the son of a Russian oligarch, has his sordid meet-cute with Anora, since she's the only stripper there who speaks any Russian. He quickly takes a liking to Anora and starts requesting her time outside the club. Thus begins their working relationship, with Vanya eventually paying her to have sex and play video games with him in his mansion, to hang out with him exclusively, and in the film's biggest set piece, to be his weekend girlfriend as he and his friends take an impromptu trip to Las Vegas, complete with private jets, swimming pools in the deluxe suite, drugs and alcohol on standby, and expensive shopping trips.
The whirlwind "romance" is shot like a Hype Williams video, full of sweeping camera shots and a roving eye to take in all the thrills unlimited money can bring. At times, it feels like the audience is meant to get caught up in it even more than Anora is. She doesn't seem to ever forget that she's on the clock, at least until Vanya makes the clearly ill-conceived choice to ask Anora to marry him, ostensibly so that he can stay in the States and not have to go back to Russia. But he persuades her that he's serious about it and she's enticed, not just by his seeming earnestness but likely by the last 48 hours they've spent living out The Wolf of Wall Street.
It's here that the movie gets much flimsier. Not only because its second half is like the crash after an intense drug high, where Vanya's handlers/babysitters find out about the marriage and arrive in New York to force an annulment. Not only because the movie at times gets too stuck in its resemblance to other movies, like Punch-Drunk Love and Uncut Gems. What's most flimsy is that, in order for this transactional fantasy to fully carry the weight needed for its second-half chicanery, on some level you have to buy that these two people have some kind of real connection, even if it's just a deep understanding of their roles and a loyalty to one another. Madison plays Anora with conviction, charisma, and savvy, but to the extent that you can't really believe she'd get suckered in by a manchild like Vanya, who behaves like someone who has never had to grow up. He's petulant, flighty, drunk and high constantly, easily distracted, and unwilling to deal in any confrontation. The only real argument for why Anora would be so committed to the marriage plot is because it's her one chance out of poverty.
In the movie's second half, when Vanya's handlers arrive and he bolts, leaving Anora essentially their prisoner as they spend the rest of the movie trying to find him and annul the marriage, Anora holds onto this conviction that she can make his family like her, or at least that Vanya will stay loyal to their union. But there's quite literally nothing to convince you that that could happen other than a blind hope. And "blindly hopeful" seems like the total opposite of how Madison plays the character. The resulting dissonance dulls what should be devastating and undermines what is supposed to be exhilarating.
Nevertheless, Anora is a lot of fun. Even in its comedown second half, the darkness of the comedy becomes just as exciting as any of its wealth thrill-seeking. The actors—many of whom are discoveries, which Baker excels at—are genuinely captivating presences on screen. Particularly, the character Igor (Yuriy Borisov) and his dynamic with Anora throughout their scouring of the city in search of Vanya.
Ultimately, if anyone here seems completely entranced by Vanya's decadent lifestyle to the point of senselessness, it is the movie itself, and that holds it back. Baker might argue that the clear delight the camera takes from luxuriating in the wealth-porn is necessary in order for the gut-punch of the second half to hit, an ultimate statement of what it really means to live in such a transactional society. Maybe that's true, but it feels as though Anora got lost in its own fantasy without ever quite recovering.
