By now, it’s no secret that Sean Baker is known for his keen ability to give insight into the world of a certain kind of working-class ilk (even if this insight is occasionally deemed by some as “exploitative” or “poverty porn” [as was the case with The Florida Project]). Not just sex workers (as he also did in 2015’s Tangerine), but undocumented immigrants (2004’s Take Out) and even “aged out” male porn stars (2021’s Red Rocket). With Anora, Baker’s pièce de résistance (based on the film winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes—the first American movie to do so since 2011’s The Tree of Life), he returns to his favorite kind of working-class hero yet again: the sex worker.
Like Halley (Bria Vinaite) in The Florida Project, Anora “Ani” Mikheeva (Mikey Madison, in her undeniable breakout role) is a stripper. Unlike Halley, she isn’t averse to having sex with select clients outside of the club (called Headquarters). In this instance, Ivan a.k.a. Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn): the twenty-one-year-old son of a Russian oligarch…though Anora won’t unearth that important detail until a bit later. And even when she does find out, it still seems unbelievable seeing as how this man-boy comes across as being so guileless, so utterly “unsmooth.” But also funny, as far as Anora can tell. And you know what they say: being able to make a woman laugh can go a long way as a man (clearly).
So when he invites her over to his mansion in the Mill Basin part of Brooklyn (the mansion in question was, at one point, actually inhabited by a real-life Russian oligarch), she accepts this offer—this “business transaction.” The “out-of-office” encounter leads to another and, before Anora knows it, Vanya is presenting her with a “proposition.” Not at all dissimilar to the one Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) did to Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) in Pretty Woman (though some viewers’ gut reaction might be to draw a slight comparison to 2019’s Hustlers due to the stripper instead of “prostitute” element).
A movie, incidentally, that was originally titled $3,000 (or just 3000)—the amount Edward agrees to give Vivian for her to spend the week with him. Anora, instead, gets $15,000 (inflation and all that). And, in a moment of dialogue that is almost certainly an homage to Pretty Woman in Anora, Vanya starts his offer at ten thousand, to which Anora replies, “Fifteen.” He agrees, with Anora admitting she would have stayed for ten, and Vanya saying he would have gone up to thirty thousand. It mimics Vivian telling Edward, “I would’ve stayed for two thousand” and him smirking, “I would’ve paid four.”
As soon as the money matter is settled, Anora packs her bags to stay with Vanya and, just as Vivian before her, she’s essentially there to be at his beck and call, with plenty of “lovin’” to provide in between (so much “lovin’,” in fact, that Baker and his wife/frequent producer, Samantha Quan, effectively served as the “intimacy coordinators” of the movie by demonstrating what sex positions that Madison and Eydelshteyn should be in for their various fuck scenes). Vanya’s overt inability to please a woman (which isn’t always a mark of inexperience so much as a common defect in most men) doesn’t even seem to bother Anora. After all, she’s getting paid. And besides, she has a good time with him. A “good time” that is, of course, furnished in large part by all the available money that Vanya has at his disposal to spend. Whether this means throwing a lavish, drug-addled New Year’s Eve party at his mansion or jet-setting off to Vegas on a whim because one of his friends tells him that’s where they had the best ketamine, money is the anthem of “no desire left out of reach.”
And what Vanya seems to desire (for more than just a week) is Anora, still insisting her name is Ani (pronounced like Annie not Ah-nee). Even if playing up her “exotic” background has done nothing but work in her favor, particularly since part of the reason Vanya was “referred” to her at Headquarters is because she’s the only one among the dancers who can speak a bit of Russian thanks to her Brighton Beach upbringing (also attributing her knowledge to a Russian grandmother that never learned to speak English).
And so, in this moment, when Vanya first becomes captivated by Anora, one might say it fits the Pretty Woman tagline of: “She walked off the street, into his life and stole his heart.” Only it doesn’t take long to understand the most fundamental difference of all between Pretty Woman’s narrative and Anora’s: one deals with a man pursuing a woman who happens to be a sex worker, and the other deals with a boy pursuing a woman who happens to be a sex worker. And that distinction makes all the difference in the world, as Anora must soon find out the hard way. But before her rude awakening, it truly does feel as though she’s “hit the jackpot,” as one of her friends and fellow strippers, Lulu (Luna Sofia Miranda)—think of her as the Kit De Luca (Laura San Giacomo) of the movie—tells her in the midst of her walking out of the club for good.
Lulu, however, is actually genuinely happy for Anora. Whereas Diamond (Lindsey Normington), another girl who works at the club and serves as a regular adversarial force in Anora’s life, seethes about the news, jadedly predicting that the marriage won’t last more than two weeks. Unfortunately, Diamond’s “prophecy” will turn out to be accurate, as Anora’s “bliss” (mainly lolling around while Vanya does drugs and/or plays video games) is violently interrupted by the appearance of two goons under the instruction of Toros (Karren Karagulian), Vanya’s godfather and the proverbial whipping boy of his parents when something goes wrong.
As for the goons, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), they’re quick to realize that Anora is their only leverage once Vanya bitches out and flees the scene, leaving his so-called beloved to fend for herself. It is in this moment that Anora should be aware that she’s been had, that everything Vanya said was total bullshit, making him far worse than what the pearl-clutchers would call a prostitute because he feigns his emotional intimacy with so much more skill. But no, Anora is convinced that Vanya will come through for her, that the reason he ran off is to figure out a solution so that they can stay together, even as his parents try to rip them apart from their remote position in Russia.
Naturally, they’re not staying “remote” for long, telling Toros that they’ll be in town the next day to sort out this “nonsense” (to use a word now automatically associated with Sabrina Carpenter). All the while, Anora remains shockingly (and naively) steadfast in her belief that the marriage isn’t going to end, that Vanya and she will find a way to “work it out,” to make his parents accept the “reality” of their nuptials—ostensibly forgetting that rich people can create whatever reality they want, whenever it suits their purpose.
Thus, the Pretty Woman comparisons stop at the abovementioned key plot point of Vanya enlisting Anora as his escort for the week. Unless, of course, one chooses to go with the original version of Pretty Woman, 3000, which includes an ending that finds Edward tossing Vivian out on her ass and throwing the money at her once she’s back on the street to quiet her down, so to speak. Otherwise, Anora is less Pretty Woman and much more Nights of Cabiria vis-à-vis the cad-ish behavior of the man who is supposed to “rescue” her from her former existence.
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