STRIPPERS AND COCAINE
SEAN BAKER’S ANORA (2024)
Director Sean Baker cements his status as one of our great living directors with this original story about the relationship between fun and trouble.
Ever fall in love with a beautiful someone and rocket up into a magenta stratosphere of religious adoration, carefree indulgence, and an all-encompassing fire of the heart? Ever put everything at risk and perform an act of blind submission to what we all come to know is that rarest of happinesses? Ever lose it all, and feel the hundred-ton crush of obliteration and heartbreak?
Sean Baker, whose new film Anora (2024) is buzzing like a firefly across audiences and the media as we delve deep into awards season, has. He knows exactly what it’s like. He stands out as a singular voice in cinema, not only because his subjects are further downmarket from most Hollywood fare (sex workers, porn actors, nomads), but for a dozen other reasons that truly make his films stay with you long after you’ve seen them.
Following the success of his awarded and anointed story of motel residents behind Disney World, The Florida Project (2017), and the lesser seen but even more charming Red Rocket (2021), he presents the story of a young stripper and escort living in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, a storied locale known for its many Russian-speaking residents. In film, it often appears as a hangout for Russian or Albanian gangsters. But, this being a Baker film, it plays an actual role as an actual place with round characters (versus flat, to crib Forster), full of complexity and dimension.
Ever been to a New York strip club? I knew a girl once who loved them. She thought strippers were like dolls; gorgeous, confident, desirable. The perfect expression of a specific kind of feminine beauty and power. Many of these clubs lack the grandness and polish of Vegas, but they still contain the palpable pairing of monetized male desire and the magnetic tension of exposed female sexuality. (Straight ones. Gay strip clubs are a party and a half with everyone on the same, sweaty page, writhing with delight at the kaleidescopic variety of ways to perform with a schlong.) “Strippers and cocaine,” we used to say, citing one of nightlife’s most signature and illicit combos.
Ani (short for Anora) is young, but experienced, fearless and noticeably centered. Mikey Madison will surely earn a nomination for playing her, and well she should; her performance is a delicious cocktail of confidence, sexiness, and most of all, a bristling vulnerability. And she’s real: her voice is nasal, her accent is one of New York’s finest – very deep Brooklyn. This is no Hustlers (2019); there’s no glorification here. She hangs with her pals at work on smoke breaks outside the club and dishes about awkward patrons and hazards of the trade. The dialogue bubbles and pops like Juicyfruit, with gems like “Bro!” (from one gal to another) and “Hellen-Keller-ass-bitch.” Poetry.
One night, her manager tells her there’s a guy asking for a girl who speaks Russian. She goes out and meets the man of the hour, a twiggy slacker named Vanya, played by an unforgettable Mark Eydelshteyn, and they piece together a conversation with him speaking Russian and her responding in English. (Her grandmother taught her Russian but it isn’t great, she says.) The son of a Russian oligarch, Vanya lives in a cavernous mansion (designed for a real oligarch, overlooking Mill Basin) and ostensibly has little to do aside from party and fuck. Madison will garner most of the accolades, but Eydelshteyn is a wondrous pile of jitters, jokes, dances and dashes. You want to cuddle and throttle him at the same time. They strike up a business (i.e. sexual) relationship, and here is where the film turns back the clock in your heart to when you were a twentysomething in love.
The good vibes actually start from the first frame, with the top-of-the-world track “Greatest Day” by British boy band Take That from 2008 (huh?). A dancefloor banger, the lyrics spell out the plot and feeling of the first act, making you soar as high as a kite. Ani agrees to play girlfriend for a week (to the catchy tune of fifteen grand), and we’re off. Ani and Vanya are awkward – this ain’t no Bogey and Bacall – fumbling through conversation and sex (mostly the rabbit variety that Vanya favors), partying with his friends, clubbing, drinking, smoking, doing lines and spraying champagne on a private flight to Vegas. Hey, you know what’s fun? Strippers and cocaine. Private planes. Vegas. I felt higher as a kite – light, airy, floating – during the first act of Anora than any moment in a theater in the past year. If life had no consequences… well. A boy can dream.
But this is Baker, and consequences are the point. Everyone of his films is about the real world. There’s no artifice, no VFX, no set pieces… This is what partying like that feels like. This is what rushed, post-adolescent sex looks like. This is what (some) strippers from Brighton Beach sound like.
And this is what the comedown from the high of being in love feels like. We haven’t heard much about Vanya’s parents, but we know from the beginning the whole thing is too good (in a bad way) to be true. The implicit question of “Where the heck are this kid’s parents?” is soon answered, when his gallivanting (and his shotgun Vegas wedding with Ani) makes its way to them via social media. They enlist Toros, a local Russian leader of some kind and Vanya’s handler, played by a smart and comedic Karren Karagulia. Tough go to be the guy to kill the movie’s joy – but he’s up to the task. He and what we assume are two standard goons show up and start the painful process of dismantling our video game playing Romeo and WTF-is-happening Juliet.
Then, suddenly we’re in a wise cracking, quirk infused, conversation heavy crime movie, with dashes of Tarantino and Scorsese added to the mix. Another question nags: “What would really happen if a rich and powerful family sought to put a sex worker in her place?” And Baker says, “I’ll show you.” But he shows us with real people. The two goons are given screen time. Dialogue. Dynamics. Vache Tovmasyan plays Garnik, the unfortunate recipient Ani’s wrath, and adds a much needed comedic turn. Yuri Borizov plays Igor, with a quietude and subltety that earns him the accolades he’s also getting.
Many of Baker’s films are arguably small stories. Two trans sex workers in Hollywood. A struggling porn actor in Texas. A group of high school friends. But this one spreads its wings, sprawls and sweeps, carrying with it a bevy of themes and emotions driven by superbly written characters and down to Earth performances. It also has a very queer sensibility, from the opening song, to Vanya’s gender neutral features, to the fierceness of the commitment to her personhood that Ani shows. There’s only one queer character (a lesbian at Ani’s club), but you never think it’s a world that’s closed off to queer people. (Though it would be interesting to see a queer version. Victor and Vanya, or Allison and Ani. Ah, well. A bi can dream.)
And Ani’’s dream ends quickly. What happens to strippers and sex workers in real life when they get into trouble? It’s not pretty. What do most people think and say about strippers and sex workers if they haven’t met any? We all know the epithets (and have probably used them). Don’t the rich usually win and poor people get fucked? Yep. And that’s Baker. Fairy tale endings are for fairy tales.
Some have called Anora “a Cinderella story.” In one of the earliest versions of the story from over 2,000 years ago, Rhodopis, the star is a Greek courtesan who ends up marrying an Egyptian king. In the Grimms’ version, the evil stepsisters slash at their feet to fit them into the glass slipper until the prince notices the pooling blood. There are versions from Iran. Italy. China. And now, Brighton Beach.
Ever had a “greatest day?” Ever held that day in your memory for the rest of your life? I knew a girl once, and we hung out “from five to five” – 5:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. Ended up at a strip club. Later, things ended badly. But Bro! She was a fun-ass-bitch and it was the greatest day.