[Nic’s Flix] Anora Deserved the Best Picture

Repeat Offenders Section Editor Nic Chang reviews Sean Baker’s Anora, a tragicomic masterclass around sex, capital and class in modern-day New York.

Warning: this review contains mild spoilers of Anora.

The most defining element of Sean Baker’s indie filmmaking is his humanity. It permeates throughout the majority of his films and the tragicomic situations his characters face, where, in spite of all their flaws, they’re still human. He’s always created captivating social realist dramas that destigmatize working-class and sex work communities, so it comes at no surprise that his next film, Anora, would delve into his observations on sex and class, yet he expands on them to deliver a genuinely moving masterpiece.

Anora “Ani” Mikheeva (Mikey Madison) works at the glamourous strip club, Headquarters, in Brooklyn, New York City, and has established herself as a successful sex worker amongst her clients. When her boss introduces her to Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch, both characters connect through their many sexual encounters. Although Vanya is in America to study, he spends his time partying in clubs and in his family’s Brooklyn mansion. Nevertheless, Ani is charmed by his extravagant, if reckless, lifestyle, and when Vanya impulsively proposes to her, she reluctantly agrees, leading them to elope at a wedding chapel in Las Vegas. When news of their marriage reaches Russia, Vanya’s parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled, threatening Ani’s future.

Within the first scenes of Anora, it’s hard to resist the visual glamour. Drew Daniels’s 35mm cinematography is bristling with saturated neon colours, resulting in striking imagery, but it is always observant of the characters, with close-ups, zoom-ins and camera movements mimicking the feel of an old-school New Hollywood-inspired drama. Most importantly, it’s one of the ways in which we connect with Ani.

When we first see her at work, she’s a confident woman with plenty of sex charisma. She’s capable of charming her clients, but always able to define her boundaries. She’s got a smart tongue and she can get sassy, competitive or vulgar if she has to, but there’s a sense of sisterhood between her and her colleagues. In the rare glimpses we see of her private life, she appears emotionally distant, unable to get along with her sister. It’s as if her extroverted persona is an escape from her strained interior life, but she’s not someone who needs to be saved or has to find better means. She’s just a person who wants what’s best for herself and deserving of basic respect and humanity.

Even when her relationship with Vanya borders on questionable, you can see what would draw her to such a person, especially based on his exciting, deceptively silly personality he exudes, and their chemistry is entertaining. But a repeat viewing only reinforces the tragic roots firmly planted in their relationship, for both characters are influenced by their class circumstances. Vanya is just a little rich boy, capable of getting anything he wants because of his wealthy heritage, tainted by the idea of buying love with money. Ani, a working-class sex worker, is fully in control of who she is, but her love for Vanya, and the favours she does for him, is defined by their transactional interactions, all of which crafts a captivating story observant of youth, love and circumstance through a Gen-Z lens.

Once Anora transitions from being a Pretty Woman/Cinderella-esque fairytale in modern-day America to a highly stressful, Uncut Gems-inspired tragicomedy, the tonal shift is seamless. After the exciting montage of Ani and Vanya’s marriage, the enthusiastic highs eventually fade and the visual palette is slowly drained of colour, symbolising Ani’s growing worry over what happens next.

Those worries are confirmed when Vanya’s Armenian godfather Toros (Karren Karagulian) sends his henchmen, Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), to the home under the orders of Vanya’s mother, Galina (Darya Ekamasova), resulting in quite possibly the funniest home-invasion sequence of 2024. It’s hilarious, because of how these characters are ill-equipped to handle this bizarre situation, resulting in dramatically escalating tension, and it’s uncomfortable, because of the sobering reminder of Ani’s circumstances unraveling.

When it leads to Vanya running away, with the characters trying to find his whereabouts, Anora falls into intentional repetition. Even when it heightens its slapstick comedy set-pieces, the narrative momentum feels exhausting and stressful, but it all feels tightly edited by Sean Baker, where his montages and cutting serve to dissipate the Cinderella fairytale, and allow the harsh reality to emerge: that it’s easy for the upper-classes to treat those below them, especially female sex workers, as play-dolls for themselves, and when the consequences come crashing down, they get to run away from their mess for everyone else to deal with. It becomes gradually clear halfway through and then fully solidified in its tragic final minutes.

But the hidden heart of Anora is Yura Borisov as Igor. When we first see his character, he seems insignificant. But as Anora progresses, he stands out because of the genuine concern he shows for Ani. In Igor’s eyes, Ani is not another object for the rich to play around with, but just another person forced into a traumatic situation. He’s not comfortable when he has to keep Ani around and his heart hurts when he sees her dehumanised, because he identifies that they come from a similar set of circumstances regarding their class positions. Borisov displays the most humanity and vulnerability amongst his cast members, because it’s a complex performance we can empathise with most.

And Mikey Madison, what a star she is. She delivers an engrossing, humorous performance that embodies the vulgarity and loudness of Ani’s character (and the Brooklyn accent is great!), but there’s more expressive layers to her acting, especially when she’s trying to hide Ani’s despair and heartbreak for a character that’s otherwise emotionally unavailable. When we get to her final scene, it’s a beautiful, heart-wrenching moment that recontextualizes, and brings forth, the nuance of her performance. To declare she won the Best Actress for simply being young and pretty is a disrespectful dismissal of her acting abilities, when she’s given so much to bring to the table.

Anora resembles most of what Sean Baker’s filmmaking stands for by delivering an absorbing, character-driven narrative of class and relationships, built with a seamless blend of social realism, slapstick comedy and stressful drama, before finally unveiling itself as the tragedy it’s been. It’s all glitz and glamour until that’s all stripped away to reveal the vulnerable humanity before us, and it’s simultaneously tragic yet cathartic. A genuine work of art and a deserved five-time Oscar winner. Sean Baker, I salute to you.