In the Dark Reviews

When "Pretty Woman" premiered in 1990, I remember certain critics treating it as a subversion of Walt Disney Productions' 1950 animated adaptation of "Cinderella," not in the least because Touchstone Pictures, which produced it, was owned by Disney.

But writer-director Sean Baker's "Anora" is a far more transgressive subversion of that romantic fairy tale, enough that it also qualifies as a subversion of the relatively tame "Pretty Woman."

In both 2015's "Tangerine" and 2017's "The Florida Project," Baker took audiences on tours through the seedy undersides of name-brand bright-light destinations (Hollywood and Disney World, respectively).

As with "Anora," those films left their protagonists with a bitterly earned wisdom, though not necessarily better off for the experiences they'd weathered.

In "Anora," Baker contrasts a candy-colored onslaught of a whirlwind courtship, fueled by sex, drugs, wealth and privilege, with the grimly amusing hangover of those ill-considered antics' real-world consequences, specifically upon those who are either discarded or tasked with cleaning up the messes.

The titular Anora (Mikey Madison), an exotic dancer in Brooklyn who does some extra sex work off the books, catches the attention of Vanya (Mark Eidelstein), a son of Russian oligarchs, because of her ability to speak Russian. From there, a private lap dance leads to a house call, a New Year's Eve party and even a week of Anora agreeing to play Vanya's "horny girlfriend."

It's during this week of decadent pleasures that Anora and Vanya fly to Las Vegas, with his fellow Russian party buddies, and Anora accepts Vanya's spur-of-the-moment proposal to get married, all while they're living high on his rich parents' tab.

Vanya's affable immaturity makes him initially endearing, as he definitely meets the criteria for what TikTok users refer to as a Timothée Chalamet-esque "hot rodent boyfriend." But in the words of author Garth Ennis, Vanya is also careless, thoughtless and terribly, terribly weak.

This becomes a problem when Vanya's displeased parents learn he's eloped with an exotic dancer, and a trio of harried henchmen are dispatched to dissolve these crazy kids' union.

Anora is put in the position of fighting to retain some semblance of self-worth and self-respect - at times physically, which she does by hilariously holding her own against three otherwise intimidating big-bruiser enforcers - even when she reconsiders her relationship with Vanya.

I appreciate that Baker portrays sex workers as working-class stiffs, much like all too many other types of insufficiently compensated manual laborers. This makes the extended shots of Anora "on the clock" not merely sexually explicit, but also empathetic, since we see there's a lot that's required of her to earn her pay.

Even though this film's title character is mostly reduced to responding to the circumstances that emerge around her, rather than her driving the action, "Anora" is absolutely a star-making turn for Madison. Aside from her compelling appearance, she's long projected a formidable fierceness, even in disposable roles such as 2019's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" and 2022's "Scream."

Although previous revisionist takes on the romance at the heart of the Cinderella fable have elevated the would-be princess to a self-rescuing damsel-in-distress, with Drew Barrymore delivering a particularly winning entry with 1998's "Ever After," "Anora" has the courage to challenge the idea that its central love affair is even worth fighting for.

And while this film's narrative draws parallels between working-class characters who are repeatedly overlooked, underestimated, dismissed and taken for granted, neither does "Anora" make the mistake of resorting to pat plot-resolving conveniences such as "pairing the spares."

Indeed, even as "Anora" dutifully tied up all of its plot threads, what impressed me most was how Baker repeated his trick, as seen in "Tangerine" and "The Florida Project," of ending his film with a deliberate absence of any real emotional resolution.

After witnessing a parade of admittedly dazzling cheap thrills, we're finally allowed to glimpse what could be the spark of a genuinely meaningful connection. But Baker adamantly refuses to go beyond the uncomfortable frisson of that moment, depriving us of any hints about how those characters' paths might proceed from there.

As much as I'd like to be hopeful, everyone's relationships in "Anora" are fundamentally transactional, which accounts for how rarely the guarded Anora allows her strong front to falter.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]