TW: Spoilers

Worldwide audiences tend to generally enjoy a good cliché love story; a Cinderella story. But something the audiences love more is a more unique situation where someone has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity type of love. The movie ‘Anora’ has been the movie to showcase an enticing love story that grows into a doleful one.

Anora, played magnificently by Mikey Madison, is a sex worker from New York. From the beginning of the film, it is seen that her job is just a matter-of-fact to her and is just a solution for her livelihood. She meets Ivan, nicknamed Vanya, played by Mark Eydelshteyn, whom she later finds out is a scion, son of a famous Russian oligarch. 

From the moment they meet in the club, Headquarters (HQ), there is a clear language barrier between the two. Ivan can speak English very loosely and Anora understands Russian but cannot speak it. The language barrier is a symbolic way of connecting with someone beyond using words. It allows for the audience to see a more humane emotional connection between Ivan and Anora as they get to know each other more throughout the film.

From here on, spoiler warning to the readers. 

Ivan originally hires her for a singular night, and despite not paying much attention to her, he is mesmerized by her and begins to ask to see her more and more. Eventually, while in Las Vegas, Nevada, they get into a romantic conversation where they decide to mutually get married. 

Throughout the movie, Ivan is displayed as a very childish character from the first ‘private’ he has with Anora. It foreshadows how his character runs away from situations he is unable to handle and only deals with it when his parents are present.

The news reaching Russia is the worst thing that could occur to Anora, as she is now forced to have her marriage annulled by Ivan’s family. Unfortunately in the end, Ivan doesn’t stand up against his parents in the way Anora hoped. 

One of the many aspects that adds ingenuity to this movie, is the fact that most of the writing for the movie was done after it had been casted. That organic approach to storytelling, done beautifully by the director and writer Sean Baker, most definitely allowed for the characters to feel more natural and fluid towards the audience. 

Outside from that, Baker successfully achieves a more complex understanding of a character like Anora, who does sex work for a living. Stereotypically dehumanized in our current society, Baker created Anora for a controversial audience to feel genuine empathy towards a sex worker, showing a more human side. While Anora is partially a gold digger, it also shows the side of her that loves Ivan, despite the signs of a betrayal incoming from him, along with her human vulnerability at the end. However, the end result of this is that Baker establishes that sex workers are just as human as people who aren’t in that same field, and deserve respect just like any other human because they have feelings just like everyone else. 

Constantly torn down by Ivan’s family’s workers and being seen simply as a gold digging “whore”, Anora is shown to be a brave individual that has a colorful and strong personality by standing up to them. Showing that Anora is only able to stand up during certain moments and knows when to keep quiet emphasizes the severity of the situation since the audience is well aware throughout many moments that she would fight back if she could. 

The end scene of Anora having sex with Igor, played by Yura Borisov, and later crying, has two main meanings.

Firstly, Igor’s character displays a vulnerable, unspoken longing of Anora, where he witnesses what can be inferred as one of the lowest points in her life. The sex shows the main form of intimacy that Anora is more capable of understanding and/or expressing, mainly inferred by her history. It shows that she suffers from a lack of exposure to other forms of connections with people. 

Secondly, her crying at the end shows that the whole act was done emotionally. A release of her emotions, confusion, grief, and need for care by someone else, not intimately. Igor offers her a crying shoulder as he hugs her at the end, noting that he understands and has a desire to help comfort her, all while being compassionate to her and her situation. The scene highlights the humane need for authentic emotional bonds.

Overall, the movie is thrilling, exciting, tense, empathic, and compassionate. It’s no secret why ‘Anora’ won the major film award Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. I would most definitely recommend this movie if you are an arthouse type of movie watcher. The deep growth and vulnerability causes this film to be a great emotionally evocative option.