Anora: A Movie Review

Dir. Sean Baker, 2024 | Genre: Romance, (Dark) Comedy, Drama | NEON

“God bless America,” moaned Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) as Anora (Mikey Madison) rubbed her bare buttocks on his crotch the first night they met in a strip club. Our Cinderella was no docile lentil-picker or the modest maiden of the Brothers Grimm but an empowered seductress, a bird-charmer through and through. She’s a 23-year-old New York City erotic dancer (who goes by the name “Ani”), and our  Russian princeling is a 21-year-old twink sent to study abroad by his oligarch parents—a privilege he squandered in dolce vita. 

The first act was a classic rugs-to-riches plot, the buttery beginnings of eros, culminating in an impetuous elopement in downtown Sin City, Nevada. Anora is now a proper wife, the rich and respectable woman she dreamt of being, escort no more. They had a lot of sex, often in hurried missionary and doggy style. However, the newlyweds were immediately plunged into the greatest cock-block of fiction, the dreaded peripeteia. What started as a blazing love story became a mere flash in the pan. Vanya’s mother, Galina (Darya Ekamasova), sent goons to annul the marriage, catching up to them mid-coitus in Vanya’s lavish flat. Vanya answered the door while visually tenting a boner.

This was no fairytale at all but a tragicomedy. Marriage in the first act is bound for a miserable third. Vanya’s family was cynical of their union, treating it as a crime gone wrong. The besotted Anora was initially resolute in preventing their marriage shattered. But, Vanya was a playboy, feckless like his father, led by the nose by the domineering matriarch. After dissolving their matrimonial contract, Vanya insouciantly sounded, “Thank you, America,” as if his one-week bride was another brothel transaction (bagging a Green Card in return). Anora was heartbroken, retreating from an ill-fated misalliance and back to where she had begun.

Anora is a filmmaking juggernaut exploring feminine strength against masculine weakness and more. It won Best Picture in Hollywood’s Academy Awards and a Palme d’Or at Cannes, like 2019’s Parasite (dir. Bong Joon-ho). Both movies were masters in subverting audience expectations. Conan O’Brien said it best: Anora’s political message was standing up against a powerful Russian—even when some men could not.

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