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Wednesday January 29, 2025
Movie Review: Anora (2024)
WARNING: SPOILERS
Once I began watching it, I remembered why I’d avoided it for so long. An American exotic dancer hooks up with the son of a Russian oligarch, and they get married. There’s not much about that sentence that intrigues me.
- Exotic dancer: OK, maybe?
- Son of a Russian oligarch: No, not at all.
- Get married: What is this, arthouse “Pretty Woman”?
I didn’t buy the premise and doubted I’d like the characters. The second part proved true. For the first 45 minutes, I didn’t like any of the characters because they’re awful and love doing worthless things. But the premise works. And the premise works because the characters are awful and worthless.
Hapless
The movie opens with a black-and-red shimmering effect before we get our first concrete image: an ass in our face. Hello! It’s a high-end strip bar, and director Sean Baker (“The Florida Project”) pans down the line, as hot young women dance before and on top of slouched men, until we get to our title girl and the title credit.
The first five minutes is a day, or a week, or at least a montage, in the life of Anora, AKA, Ani (the now Oscar-nominated Mikey Madison, late of the Manson clan in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”), and it should be required viewing for anyone who goes to one of these clubs and thinks the stripper is into you. Looks soul-draining. Then she’s tapped to take care of this rich Russian kid because she speaks, or at least understands, Russian.
The next half hour should be required viewing for anyone who thinks capitalism isn’t dangerously fucked up.
Ivan, AKA Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), is a thin kid with a crazy mass of hair—think Russian douchebag Timothee Chalamet—who gets his lap dance, gets her phone number, invites her to his place. It’s a mansion, and she’s stunned by the opulence. Bargains are made, the ante continually upped. He pays for a night, he pays for a week, they decide to take a plane to Vegas with friends. It’s all drinking and vaping and drugs, video games and paid sex and dance clubs and shitty music, all on the back of whatever awfulness the Russian oligarch does to make his billions. So this half hour was a slog.
When does she fall for him? It’s less him than the swank. It’s the economy, stupid. When does he fall for her? He digs her, certainly, but why would a monumentally privileged 21-year-old agree to marry an exotic dancer? Because, in his post-partying stupor, lamenting the fact that his father is forcing him to return to Russia to learn the family business, he says aloud, “If I were to marry an American, I wouldn’t have to go back to Russia.” And there we go. It’s a business proposition. The last thing to be negotiated is the size of the carat.
Any thinking person would realize it doesn’t solve his problem—it just creates a worse one—but these aren’t thinking people. And this is when the movie gets interesting.
Word of the marriage reaches Russia. Vanya’s godfather, Toros (Karren Karagulian), a kind of community rep for Russian and Armenian emigrees in New York, and who was supposed to be watching over him, is then harangued by Vanya’s unseen mother to find out what the fuck is going on and make it go away. Oh, and they’re on their way to America now. Panicked, Toros sends two men, Garnick and Igor (Armenian Vache Tovmasyan and Russian Yura Borisov), to go to the mansion and lay down the law.
At this point I was worried about our title character, particularly when Garnick reminds the bald-headed Igor not to hurt Vanya but doesn’t mention Ani. I flashed on the “Pine Barrens” episode of “The Sopranos,” and that Russian mobster on “The Wire” talking about a corpse: “Did it have face? Hands? Yes? Then it wasn’t us.” You don't mess with these people.
Instead, when they get there, Vanya argues and runs away, while Ani, enraged at being called a hooker and having her new life upended, attacks the men. Furniture is destroyed, she breaks Garnick’s nose, Igor holds onto her for dear life, and the thing becomes a comedy. Toros arrives but he’s hapless, too, and they spend the night searching for a rich skinny Russian kid who could be anywhere: at this arcade, at this Coney Island candy shoppe where his friend works (a friend stupid enough to confront Igor); at this restaurant, where Toros passes around his photo. Toros is basically an unstoppable force—but, again, hapless. It’s one long crazy night.
I assumed Vanya was hiding, and plotting, rather than hanging in one of his usual haunts, but of course not. He’s a spoiled idiot. He dealt with the crisis by getting drunk in all the familiar places and then returning to Headquarters, Ani’s old place, for more drinks and lapdances—this time with Ani’s bete noire, Diamond (real-life exotic dancer Lindsey Normington). That’s where they finally corral him.
One of my favorite moments? The next morning, the oligarch's attorney has gotten early on a judge’s docket to annul the marriage, but even here Toros tries to manipulate things. Bad move. The judge (Michael Sergio, who played a judge in Baker’s “Prince of Broadway” in 2008) ain’t having it. I’m like: Buddy, no, you’re in a court of law now. STFU.
Moot anyway: What gets married in Vegas gets annulled in Vegas.
All through the long evening, within the confines of his job, Igor has seemed quietly enamored of, or at least empathetic with, Ani. He seems to think she’s getting a raw deal. Is she? Vanya is worthless but Ani isn’t thinking things through, either. She wants to stay married, but if they do, one assumes, he’s disinherited. Could she love a Vanya who has no mansion and no money? Who has to somehow get a job? That’s the question she should’ve been asking herself.
Meanwhile, we await the parents. What are they like—these rich oligarchs that have had everyone terrified? Turns out Dad (Aleksei Serebryakov) seems mostly businessman. It’s the haute couture mother, Galina (Darya Ekamasova), who has everyone terrified. Including Dad.
There’s a moment where Ani almost figures a way out. Vanya sobers up and accepts his fate with tailed tucked, yelling at Ani over his own ineptitude. So Ani decides yes, they’ll get divorced, but on her terms—with a divorce lawyer. And she’ll get half. She says this outside the private jet. Somehow Galina wills her back inside. I was disappointed—but relieved. I didn’t want her to lose her face and hands.
Fresh
The movie could’ve used a tighter edit (Oscar nommed, so what do I know) but it does have one of the best endings of the year—even if it recalls 1994’s “Fresh.”
Igor is left in charge of Ani. She keeps insulting him but he accepts it all with a kind of muted fascination. I like what a slow processor he is. He doesn’t have many lines but he makes them work. He’s also shown himself to be a standup guy. He gives the concussive Garnick drugs for his pain and Ani thinks he’s a dealer. No, they’re his grandmother’s, with whom he lives. He’s also the only one to stand up to the oligarchs, telling them they owe Ani an apology. They don't, of course. It's the gesture. It's the balls.
The next day, amid the silence of a January snowstorm, he takes her to the bank to collect her “alimony,” and then home. And it’s there that she makes her move. Why does she do it? To feel something other than the pain she’s feeling? To feel in control again—the old familiar control? Probably. She gets on top and starts humping him in this idling car covered in snow. It’s when he tries to pull her face down for a kiss that things go awry—or toward the truth. She resists, then slaps him, then cries and whimpers. And they stare at each other. And he figures out what she needs. He pulls her toward him again, but this time toward his chest, where she crumples and breaks down crying. That’s our ending.
“Fresh” did that, too—oh right, this kid who’s seemed so tough for so long is just a kid—but it’s still powerful.
“Anora” has been nominated for six Oscars, including picture, director, Madison as lead actress, and—surprise!—Borisov for supporting. Good for him. I think Baker helped. He lets us come to him. We think he’s an extra, a Russian henchman, before he develops into the only character in the movie worth a damn.