By Kate Wiselogel, Contributor 

[Neon; 2024] 

Rating: 6/10

Earlier this year for the first time in 13 years, an American film won the Palme D’Or, the Canne Film Festival’s most prestigious award. That film was Anora (2024). Anora has quickly become director Sean Baker’s most widely acclaimed and mainstream film, with many critics considering it a front-runner for this year’s Oscars. Baker is known for his low-budget indie films that often revolve around the lives of sex workers, such as The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021). 

Anora, in true Baker fashion, follows the story of the titular New York sex worker (Mikey Madison) who, after being introduced to Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) the charming and immature son of a Russian oligarch, begins a whirlwind romance with him that culminates in his wealthy family and their hired help forcing an annulment. 

The film’s protagonist Anora (or Ani as she prefers to be called) is given life through Madison’s incredible performance. Where the film’s writing doesn’t always grant its characters the depth that they deserve, Madison makes up for it in her magnetic performance. She masterfully conveys the complexity of having to simultaneously balance grit and hustle with the flickers of hope for achieving the dream of financial stability. Some of the film’s best moments come during the various close-ups of Madison’s face, where the audience is forced to linger on Ani’s understanding of the precarity of her situation but her sincere yearning for her dream to come true nonetheless. 

While Madison’s performance is truly what anchors the film, the rest of the ensemble cast provides ample support, especially regarding the strong elements of comedy throughout the film. Eydelshteyn in particular is perfectly charming and repulsive as Ivan. His charisma and immaturity help the audience to understand just what draws Ani to him (beyond his wealth). His performance makes it clear that he is destined for more than the “Russian Timothée Chalamet” moniker that has been gifted to him by the press.  

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Where Anora falls short is in the more complex question of what exactly the film is trying to get at. The film’s title in context is particularly interesting. When Ivan’s family’s goons refer to our protagonist as Anora, she is quick to insist that she prefers to be called Ani. As they frequently do throughout the film, the men ignore her. The name comes up again later in the film when Igor (Yura Borisov), the one person in the film who seems to see Ani for who she truly is, comments that he likes the name Anora better than the name Ani. In this context, the use of the name Anora as the film’s title raises many questions. Is this Baker’s attempt to showcase just how much of Ani’s life is dictated by the male gaze? Or is it an example of the film itself falling into its own trap? 

The evidence for the latter option comes from the film’s ending, which drastically cheapens the whole affair. The film ends with Ani being escorted back to her home by Igor following the successful annulment of her marriage to Ivan. After he returns her wedding ring, which had been stolen from her earlier in the film by Toros (Karren Karagulian), Ivan’s godfather and de facto babysitter, Ani is deeply moved. Seeming to feel no other way to express the complex emotions that she is feeling, Ani initiates sex with Igor and when he tries to kiss her, she slaps him before beginning to sob in his arms. The silence and the stark shift in tone offered by this final scene allows for all the fast-paced and unbelievable hijinks of the rest of the movie to finally catch up with both its audience and its protagonist.  

There is seemingly both an intentional and unintentional hollowness that comes from this ending. The film’s ending falls into cliches about sex workers and their relationships with their bodies. The trope of the sex worker whose only way to process emotions is through reverting to sex before being saved by the man who dares to see beyond her status as a “fallen woman” has been played out time and time again. By the end of the movie, it feels like the audience is meant to see themselves as also falling into the category of the savior as well. The ending of Anora reads like it is meant for viewers outside of the world of sex work to feel good about themselves for being brave enough to watch a movie about it.  

Ultimately, Anora is a film about the inescapability of the male gaze, even from men such as Baker and Igor who fancy themselves to know better. Even in making a film about the pervasive control of the male gaze over the lives of women, it still cannot be fully avoided. However, one place where Anora does succeed is in not being judgmental or moralizing about the actions of its protagonist. While Anora is not always a humane film, it does hold up a mirror to the ways which we as a society think about sex work specifically and the working class more generally. It is a film that leaves its audience with both a lot to be desired and a lot to think about.