I do need to get out in front of this. I have a clear bias and history of loving Sean Baker movies. I think both ‘Florida Project‘ and ‘Red Rocket‘ are two of the finest independent films of the past decade, so it should come as no surprise when I heard that his latest feature ‘Anora’ won the Palm D’or at Cannes I was foaming like a train enthusiast to get in to see it.

I unfortunately missed it at TIFF in September, being unable to secure a ticket while I was in the Great White North. But managed to catch a screening at my local cinema this past weekend. It is the tour de force of performances everyone has been clamoring to say that is, in every sense possible.

Enter Annie, a Brooklyn based sex worker simply living her life. The opening sequence shows her at work, flirting, stripping, making money, making fun of the horny weirdos that make up her patrons. Even in this opening sequence we get a glimpse at the actress that Madison is, as Annie changes body language, tone, timbre, whenever she speaks to a close friend, a client, her boss, her rival. Little differences in her performance go a long way to show a young woman confidently navigating the world that she inhabits.

It’s not long into the film before we are introduced to Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), an immensely wealthy Russian citizen who wants a stripper who can speak Russian. Annie is from a Russian immigrant family, she later explains her Grandmother never learned English, and obliges. She doesn’t want to speak Russian at first, and it makes sense. In this beginning sequence we’ve seen Annie use her voice to stay on top of every encounter she comes across. Speaking a language she’s not as fluent as she likes puts her on her back foot.

Annie and Vanya’s relationship takes off, first he pays her to come around his mansion to have sex. Then he pays her to be his girlfriend for a couple weeks, then he decides that they should get married while on a bender in Vegas. He is exactly the spoiled awkward child you imagine. He wants for nothing, and any small thing he dreams of having he makes his own with a wave of a stack of hundreds, or a swipe of the Visa. He disparages his parents who want him to go back to Russia to work in the family business, but he reasons that if he gets married that they cannot, or will not make him grow up. His logic is just as sound as it appears to you now, absolutely insane. Annie gives furtive looks of concern, but she does not push because she’s managed to find her golden goose. Why would she throw this away?

Then the real fun begins, Vanya’s godfather pays him a visit when he hears of the wedding and all hell breaks loose. Once Vanya hears that his parents are en route to America to pick him up and force him to go back to Russia he abandons Annie the second it’s convenient. He runs away from his responsibilities not only to his parents, but to his wife.

The next sequence is a comedy of errors, as Annie, Vanya’s Godfather Toro, and Toro’s goonsquad Igor and Garnick drive all over New York in a desperate attempt to find the run away groom. Annie the whole time says that she and Vanya will just talk, surely they can explain to Vanya’s parents that they are in love. They must listen to their son and his new wife, surely?

Throughout the search for Vanya we see examples of what the final moment of the film will be about. The workers, the ones doing the work, be they sex workers, maids, or rough and tumble Russian goons, will never be seen as people by the elites. Even the managerial class like Toro are not worthy of being treated with dignity and respect when Vanya’s parents show up. In the closing sequence of the movie, we see a sex worker come to grips with how the world sees her, how it will always see her. And after watching the film we are forced to reckon with the fact that every worker, be it sex or otherwise, is not so dissimilar from her. Sex work is after all, work. And our bosses see us with the same regard that Annie’s boss saw her.

5/5