Baker is decidedly not my cup of tea, and I agree with a lot of what Tuppence writes in the spoiler box. Despite the restricted scenario,
Anora is oddly unfocused and only intermittently funny. As far as movies about a stripper falling in with a wealthy benefactor go, I vastly prefer Soderbergh's underrated
Magic Mike's Last Dance. (Come to think of it, the Soderbergh-signed
Magic Mike movies, taken together, are smarter at juggling concerns about love, sex, fantasy, and the economy than this film is, and they look nicer too.) But I'd like to offer up a possible reading of the film that nudges the film away from Lubitsch(??)/Hawks and perhaps more toward Fassbinder/Imamura territory.
The common description of the film goes something like this: Ani, a lovably brash, street-smart stripper falls for a Russian prince charming who whisks her away from her daily grind in a romantic whirlwind. They have a fairy tale romance that culminates with Ani living as a princess in their shared castle, before his wicked parents circle the wagons around their reputation and
cruelly eject Ani back to her lower class station.
In this reading, Baker is a sympathetic crusader on behalf of marginalized sex workers, and the "critique" he offers with the film is directed squarely at elites who exploit the lower class (like Vanya, her lover who
betrays
her) and prevent upward mobility out of disdain (like his parents).
But there's enough in the film to suggest a much more critical view of Ani, to the point where the film's title is almost a red herring to bolster identification and lead the audience away from questioning certain aspects of the story. In this reading, the film is not really a fairy tale, and the usual suspects aren't the sole target of the satire; Baker skewers aspirational hedonism and its adherents in the younger generation with equal aplomb.
For much of the film's first act, Baker opts for montage and
Breathless-style jump cuts to establish character & milieu and propel the story along at a fleet pace. We're introduced to Ani in her work habitat at the strip club, and we watch how she operates. It involves extracting money from clients as quickly and cleanly as possible: flash a winning smile, throw out some cheery introductions and flirtatious banter, and then offer to escort the client to a VIP room or an ATM for a quick cash withdrawal. A dance, and then onto the next one. The editing emphasizes the mercenary quality of the work, and this is foundational to how we view her character going forward.
The first character detail we get is not a flattering one: Ani has violated unwritten stripper etiquette by giving a lap dance to "Robert," who is somehow exclusive to her co-worker Diamond. Does this exclusivity refer to a partner or a client? As we will see, in this film, the distinction is often blurred. Ani casually and sarcastically downplays her coworker's anger. No solidarity here! It will come back to bite her late in the film when
she catches Diamond giving a private dance to her husband Vanya. Ani is even more furious in this scene than Diamond is in the early scene, and it begs the question: does exclusivity only matter to Ani when it's self-serving? By this point we've explicitly been shown Ani playfully asking a client if his family knows he's at the strip club, and sharing a laugh at his "I hope not!" response. Baker is often touted as being "pro-sex work," but here he appears to offer a provocative question about this line of work: when does someone in Ani's position abandon their scruples?
The accelerated montage produces a certain hollowness in this first act. Mindless, repetitive jackhammer sex with no intimacy whatsoever (shot plainly and mechanically, which underlines this); a parade of materialism, hedonism, drugs, and partying; conversation that is utterly superficial and empty. The fun never stops. Baker twice reuses the excessively upbeat "Greatest Day" song, which we associate with the fantasy-transactional world of the strip club due to its placement over the opening credit sequence, making the jubilation hard to take straight. All this relentlessly-edited conspicuous consumption inevitably recalls
The Wolf of Wall Street, and if audiences take this to be romantic, aspirational, or even admirable, surely they would find a mirror image of themselves in the ending to Scorsese's film.
Act 2 opens by introducing Toros, the Zakharov family's fixer and Vanya's handler. We meet him in a setting that is distinctly unlike the settings we've seen thus far (e.g. strip club, Vanya's mansion, candy shop, casinos, Vegas penthouse suite, chintzy Vegas wedding chapel): a church. He is participating in a baptism ceremony, an example of culture and tradition entirely alien to Vanya and Ani. But he is torn away due to the Zakharovs' hysterical insistence that he wrangle their son immediately. Toros is a man bound by obligation, both religious and professional, which stands in obvious, stark contrast to the spoiled, carefree Vanya. But it also stands in contrast to Ani, who has shirked her minimal responsibility by neglecting to pick up milk for her shared apartment on her way home. Fundamentally, Ani wants a life with minimal responsibility, which Vanya's wealth will provide her.
Toros, who is fantastically acted by Karren Karagulian, is the first concrete threat to Ani's new life. Naturally, she's pretty quick to assert her position of authority (which she believes is bestowed upon her due to her new class) over him and his goons, ordering them to leave "her" home and threatening to press charges. Toros is also Armenian, and when he agitates Vanya, the young Russian heir hurls insults at him that underline their ethnic difference—something Ani too is lightning quick to adapt: "You
Armenian piece of shit!" She'll fit right in among her fellow elites.
The latter comes in response to Toros referring to Ani as a "prostitute." This designation violently offends her, but what does she think she is? Her first meeting at Vanya's house is implied to be a straightforward cash-for-sex arrangement. She becomes Vanya's "horny girlfriend for the week," which entails sex, in exchange for a negotiated fee. When Vanya asks if Ani is "available" during the New Year's party, she tells him she has "holiday rates," and Baker cuts to them fucking in the bedroom. The film is very explicit here, revealing what Ani denies about herself.
Why deny it? It isn't because Ani fundamentally objects to sex work, it's because it threatens the illusion she has constructed for herself that this marriage is based on love and not money.
Although the film positions Toros as the villain of the piece at this point in time, much of what he says during this initial appearance turns out to be correct, in spite of Ani's protestations. His function is to throw cold water on her fantasy. His line, "
This isn't Ivan's home. This is his father's house. Everything Ivan has belongs to his father," is the first time reality
really starts to sink in for Ani. Some other examples:
TOROS: I am telling you, you do not know this guy.
ANI: I do know him.
TOROS: You do not know this guy, I'm telling you.
ANI: Oh, I know my husband. I do.
TOROS: No, you don't.
Point for Toros.
ANI: I love my husband, and I plan on being with him forever.
TOROS: No, don't give me that bullshit. Do not give me that bullshit. You don't love him. You do not love him, and he doesn't love you. You understand? That's in your head.
Toros is unquestionably correct that Vanya does not love Ani; another point. The question of whether or not Ani loves Vanya must go to the judges. (Can one truly love someone they don't know?) Toros continues pleading the case.
He proposes an alternative narrative of the events we've been shown in the first act:
TOROS: The picture is very, very clear here. A scheming prostitute married Ivan... cheated Ivan to marry her, so she can steal from his wealthy family.
His revision is an embellishment to present to the law in his hypothetical scenario—we know that Ani didn't "cheat" Vanya into marrying him (right...?). But because the audience naturally roots for Ani due to her status as the protagonist, and also because Baker characteristically keeps a spotlight on Madison's charismatic performance, we may not immediately notice just how well Toros's narrative fits what we've seen.
One of Ani's first moves after meeting Vanya is to arrange a rendezvous with him outside of the club, keeping him away from other strippers who might catch his eye and move in on her prize. She's not going to let him become a Robert. Let's look again at the parting exchange between Ani and Diamond after Ani has quit her job at the club:
DIAMOND: Caught your whale?
ANI: Seems I did, didn't I?
[after an brief ensuing altercation]
ANI: Stay jealous, babe. Stay jealous, honey. Jealousy is a disease. Remember that, Diamond. I'm just gonna go chill in my mansion or whatever. You know, no big deal.
Ani is riling her up, but the exchange is nevertheless telling. What is Diamond "jealous" of? Love, or money? Is Vanya a husband or a whale? This is a pretty fundamental question, and the film is ambiguous enough on its answer. Baker offers us a few scattered, wordless close-ups of Ani looking affectionately at Vanya, and from these we may initially assume a genuine fondness for/crush on him. But there's also the question of sincerity in appearance—again, we've seen how Ani operates, that her job involves faking emotions. And Ani is getting paid, which means she's on the clock.
I think at best, these close-ups might show that Ani likes the
idea of love, and that Toros is right about love being "in her head." It's possible that she is fooling herself into thinking she loves Vanya (on top of the more obvious delusion that Vanya loves her) to justify the enjoyment she receives from his money. Just what does she see when she is looking at Vanya? A lovable goofball, or her ticket to a life of limitless wealth and endless fun? Can these two things even really be untangled?
So when Ani defensively proclaims her and Vanya's supposedly mutual love to Toros, it registers not as a genuinely scandalized woman reacting to an unjust challenge, but as a woman desperately clawing to maintain her newfound wealth.
Later in the film, Toros gives a speech at the diner after a group of young men brush off his urgent search.
TOROS: You know what, I'm so sick of your generation, man. I mean, look at you. No respect for elder, no respect for authority, no goals. I mean, the only goal you have just to buy pair of cool sneakers. That's all. I mean, honestly. Come on. What the fuck is wrong with you? Huh? Why don't you just hear me out? No work ethics. Lazy, stupid. I don't understand. I've been working since I'm 16 years old. What is wrong with you? All you do is TikTok, Instagram, TikTok, Instagram. That's it.
In a provocative gesture, Baker frames him against the American flag:
How ironically are we meant to take this? Who is the target? We have a hard-working Armenian immigrant chastising the younger generation's materialism and lack of seriousness in a moment of frustration. The audience laughs at how square he is. And the counterarguments come ready-made. Why respect elders when they've led the world down this disastrous path? (Although, does this justify taking advantage of the easygoing elderly candy shop owner and mocking him as "a Helen Keller-ass bitch"?) Why work hard and have goals when doing so won't get you anywhere due to the ceilings the economic system erects? There's a question of blame here, since this kind of nihilistic hedonism is a byproduct of the country that raised these youths. When does justifiable blame cross the line into excuse?
America is the land of endless fun, for those who can pay. Vanya says it best, as Ani removes her thong during a lap dance: "God bless America!" (Note that she's breaking the rules here, i.e. "cheating," to get her hooks into him early...!) Strip clubs are where money intersects with sex and the illusion of intimacy; the girls sell the illusion, but they still don't have healthcare or retirement plans. While many Americans know and accept that the "American Dream" is dead, they still buy into forms of corrupted American illusion. Endless, hollow fun, via consumption or algorithms. By framing Toros against the flag, is Baker offering a critique of this America through his monologue?
We can choose to take Toros seriously as an outsider with a meaningful perspective, and observe that his monologue exists within a film whose first act can be understood as a critique of materialism and the fantasy of having no responsibilities. Perhaps Toros is once again telling us what we need to hear, even if we reject his masters: that maybe all this fun is unhealthy, and that maybe we need a sense of responsibility and some semblance of tradition and history to anchor ourselves if we're to have a future with any humanity.
Vanya's cardinal sin is not that he's exploitative or that he's malevolent; it's that he's not serious. The callousness is merely a result of this. It's demonstrated definitively in his final, unintentionally cutting line to Ani:
VANYA: Thank you...for making my last trip to America so fun.
The Russian heir has been seduced by American excess, of which Ani was an agent. But he'll be fine. It's Ani who maybe has a lesson to learn.
Regarding the ending,
I agree with Tuppence that something about Ani's behavior rings a bit false, like Baker is forcing the conclusion he wanted ever so slightly. Then again, maybe it's right that Ani's Pavlovian sexual response to being presented with a glittering signifier of wealth produces a kind of distancing effect for the audience. This interaction does not reflect particularly well on an industry which conflates physical intimacy and money transactions, muddling the former.
Adam Nayman describes the ending as "a Rorschach test that says at least as much about the viewer’s moral and emotional perspective as it does the characters’ (or the filmmaker’s)," which looks true from where I stand, and I don't think the ambiguity serves the film. My free associative response to this Rorschach test:
I'm not inclined to weep with or for Ani, as in melodrama. It confirms the film was never, at any point, a love story for either side. I'm more inclined to see this ending clinically, or perhaps even severely: in a dog-eat-dog world, some, like Ani, are bound to be losers. The winner's life she has "lost" isn't something worth saving. Whether or not she has recognized this and arrived at some kind of class consciousness in the end is unknown, but it's maybe there on some level for the audience to recognize or not. In matters of intimacy and politics, chasing fun is often not a viable path. And now that the dream is over, maybe it's time to really get serious. A bitter pill for many, and not one I'm even really sure Baker intended, though it does make for a suitably cold ending.
