This was such a good read. I love everything you said about the scarf. That scene—and the end when she pleads with Vanya one last time, only to be laughed at, are where the movie stands out the most to me. I have felt that bitter humiliation more than once in my life, of having to accept the warmth of an object that existed primarily to hurt me. It is such a contradictory and insulting feeling. I agree that this movie is a nihilistic and sobering reality check.
There is countless evidence and quotes from Baker that a lot of the positives you credit the film for are projections from a media-optimist person, so to speak. Baker has said in a press conference for this film he believes sex work should be “decriminalized and unregulated,” while evidence shows this is only beneficial for pimps/brothels, not the sex workers. Baker has said Ani soon finds out that “[Igor] is even a teddy bear.” He calls the last scene “a catharsis.” There is evidence that he did not want to pay the sex workers he consulted (or even the crew members, as per stories from them as well as from IATSE themselves). There was no intimacy coordinator for Mikey Madison, a young and heretofore relatively unknown actress. Sean Baker clearly does not care about women or sex workers. He cares only about making his movie. Madison gave a great performance which I think is the only thing (other than the shots and colors) that is making this movie controversial rather than unanimously bad. The lack of development of her character in the writing whether intentional or not is harmful to sex workers and women everywhere and it is no wonder that the institution of Hollywood and the Oscars which has history in sexual abuse and union-busting is a fan of it.
I think this essay is interesting and well-written, and is the most optimistic possible take on the film, but I think the film is being given way too much credit. At the end of the day, no positive impact will come from this film other than some sex workers feeling seen, which ultimately does nothing if the film doesn’t humanize/portray them well in the first place. All sex work is exploitation and Anora doesn’t convey that. I think women liking this movie is just like Ani taking Vanya’s proposal. It was never for you.
There is perhaps some class commentary in the film but there are way better pieces of media to ingest if one is looking for class commentary.
this is an interesting perspective -- echoing the LARB piece I linked in the essay, I actually thought Baker's perspective on sex work in the film was incredibly nihilistic and did not read it as glamorizing or romanticizing sex work at all. The ending, to me, seemed like it actually confirmed the common narrative that sex work is inherently traumatizing and that sex workers are so exploited by their work that they cannot experience normal intimacy or love (it honestly reminded me of some Dworkin I've read on the issue, although that was surely not Baker's intention). I also strongly disagree that decriminalization only benefits pimps and brothels, although that's slightly besides the point (FOSTA/SESTA for instance has been unimaginably dangerous to sex worker lives). the most realistic thing you can say about the film imo is that it has very little coherent ideology, which is part of why i specify in the essay that I'm separating my ideas about the film from authorial intent; I also feel like i stated very clearly that I don't think Baker has made a meaningfully feminist film or anything, and that I have many criticisms of the ways he portrays sex workers and women. As I state in the essay, I believe that reflecting the conditions of women's abuse can result in reproducing those conditions & that dynamic in the film is very worthy of being criticized. liking a film, to me, means being interested in the ideas it brings to the table as a cultural object & is rarely connected to authorial intent. however I do also think the film had real artistic value and that it's not just good or interesting by accident -- so maybe we just disagree there!
I really appreciate your perspective on this as well. I think there is a lot of nuance lost when talking about this film no matter what, so to see well-written thoughts like yours I think creates a great dialogue, even if I disagree on some counts.
hi rayne! can you elaborate on what dworkin this reminded you of? obv right wing women as you mentioned, but where did she talk about sex workers & intimacy? (i’m taking a class on dworkin right now at bisr and we just finished pornography so i want to be sure i didn’t miss anything)
honestly was just referring generally to a relatively nihilistic attitude abt sex/intimacy under patriarchy I get from a lot of her work, but off the top of my head I believe there’s a part in RWW (might be 2nd chapter?) where she talks about the idea of a liberated “sexual intelligence” for women, I.e. a capacity for beautiful and transformative intimacy, and how it is destroyed / interrupted by the existence of prostitution & patriarchy in general. (Not saying I agree w this take)
Sex worker here - Decriminalization is actually the ONLY policy that matters for the health and safety of sex workers everywhere. (There are other important policies and interventions of course, but without decriminalization none of them mean anything) I recommend you check out "Revolting Prostitutes" by Molly Smith and Juno Mac.
Sex workers should definitely not be criminalized, but sex work as a whole should not be normalized and left up to the free market, which is what Baker was implying in the full quote. “Unregulated” also makes no sense.
I work at a theater and was discussing Anora with a co-worker who had just watched it. Having seen it when it was first released I’ve had such a hard time wrapping my head around why I just don’t know if I actually thought it was a well done film or not. My largest criticism is despite a great performance from Mikey Madison, the character of Ani has little to no depth. I don’t need an extensive backstory, but I do need to see what she does when she’s not at work, who she hangs out with, what her interests are, etc. I don’t think Sean Baker does much to get us to see her as human, as you mentioned, beyond us being concerned for a vulnerable woman in a situation where she is once again being used by men. The only thing I could come up with is we’re meant to know so little about her because she keeps the men who visit her at work and seemingly everyone else at arm’s length. So essentially we only know her the way they do, but despite that are meant to recognize her precarious and dangerous situation. I still don’t believe that’s the case though. While I can acknowledge what this film accomplished on a smaller budget is impressive and could possibly lead the way for more recognition for indie films, I largely agree with your dissection of this movie. It expresses a lot of what I also feel about it.
I agree that it’s obvious that Baker’s intent is first and foremost (and perhaps exclusively) to make a great, entertaining “art” film. Like rf-q, I think it’s this agenda that lends Anora to fruitful commentary; it’s not blatant and easily readable propaganda or critique, no matter how much lip service to the “sex-worker” community Baker, Madison et al. have paid during the film’s promotion. Exploitation can be both appealing and harmful; Ani can be both shallow and cavernously deep (which I thought she was); a guy can be both tender and brutal; surrender can be both a defeat and a victory. Despite such incongruences, though, I thought the film’s core message was very obviously a certain pseudo-Christian, Marxist critique of the neoliberal female condition, emblematised by Ani https://toolongforacomment.substack.com/p/accidentally-abolitionist-why-radfems It’s no wonder “sex-work” advocates haven’t liked it at all!
left the movie thinking about a lot but the parts where she's cradled between vanya's arms as he mindlessly plays video games stuck with me for some reason. great essay!
Yeah I agree for some reason I think I was most quietly angry in the scenes where she’s looking at him and holding him like a lifeline and he’s holding the game console and looking at the tv
i totally agree that anora’s interiority was demonstrated through mikey madison’s performance. i think in recent years there’s been an outsized desire for art to lay everything out explicitly for viewers, and i think that rarely makes for good art. i also find it interesting that baker keeps aligning the film with the sex working community as a whole. it’s important that he and the cast researched and tried to honor the community in the film.
but i came away thinking about *anora* and her story as an american woman at the mercy of her circumstances who still has faith in her destiny. i drew a million little parallels to the people in my life who have wanted so deeply to believe in a dream that could pull them out of their familial and economic difficulties, only to have their paths blocked by things many around them had never even thought about. i thought about the times i have confidently gotten into ambiguous, impossible romantic relationships but end up so badly wanting to believe in the promise of love. and how we often turn to familiar but hollow forms of validation at our lowest points. but maybe that serves baker’s point (non-rhetorical)? above all else, anora is a girl who wanted to live out the american dream.
all that to say, i really enjoyed reading your perspective. despite the horror, i did find humor and levity in the film, as we can in life, and i think that balance is why i’ll watch it again and again.
I also think Ani’s youth is important and under-discussed in the critiques. She thinks she’s better than all of the older workers in the club. There’s obviously still patriarchal hierarchy even within sex work, and in Ani’s case, the audience is seeing society’s status games (young women > old women) play out in this smaller context of sex work.
oh that’s interesting, i hadn’t considered the age dynamic. to me, she seemed to have good relationships with most of the women in the club sans Diamond who was consistently antagonistic. i think she and her best friend at the club may have been the only ones with enough youth to really believe that it was a true “cinderella” moment and felt some superiority in that. definitely agree that’s a symptom of patriarchal / heteronormative hierarchy playing out
I was also in a theater full of people who were laughing during the violent part (the first time I saw it) and I felt like I couldn’t breathe and I was literally twisting in my seat it was awful
"The erotics of class ascendency flirted enticingly with a dream of heterosexual normalcy that had long been out of my reach. The first time a heterosexual fantasy ever helped me cum, I was thinking about him calling me poor."
your analysis of the interdimensions of class and sex have always amazed me, but what struck me here is the deft candor of this piece. Your words never cease to feel like scholarship for my soul, in a way - you make me remember how to human better . Thank you for this - I'd love to use a quote of this essay for my review of Anora for FilmDaze :)
I don’t think a film where the main character who is a sex worker gets held and tied down by men all whilst screaming for help and it being framed as comedic……does any service for sex workers at all. Especially when most sex workers fear that
After seeing all the discourse on Twitter and every point becoming misconstrued, this has been a refreshing take to see. I feel like it’s lost on a loud minority of chronically online social media users that depiction ≠ endorsement and so people see Anora being humiliated for the sake of this stupid boy and think that’s the point without actually trying to grasp what it means. The film has its flaws in some parts but with this discourse, you’d think it was more than another typical Sean Baker movie about class and sex workers.
depiction ≠ endorsement being widely understood could drastically change the landscape of how we understand and critique media n I wish for that landscape everyday
you described the pit I had in my stomach throughout this whole movie - thank you. I have been trying (and largely failing) to find words for how sickening it felt to watch her go all in and then lose at every turn. I also read the last scene as "an image of complete alienation, total defeat," which made me feel so confused and disheartened. did we need another movie about a sex worker losing?
incredible essay (as usual) on a film i also haven't really been able to stop thinking about since i saw it. v interesting to see you feel the contrast between your nausea and apprehension at the 'henchmen restraining / fighting ani' bits and other peoples laughter because i felt that internally - as an eastern european who's personally known a non-zero number of soviet oligarchs, i found myself oscillating wildly between finding the film really funny in its portrayals of easteuro / slavic archetypes and deeply tragic in the slow unraveling of ani's vision of her own success story. the laughs that movie pulled out of me were like almost uncomfortable & jarring lmao
just a small aside - ani is not a first-gen immigrant. the link you used on that phrase has baker mention that her mother moved to america as a teenager so presumably ani is US-born, making her second-gen. sorry, this is really pedantic😭
that's so weird! i suppose there is that dual definition, i forget some people say 'first-gen' when i guess they mean first generation BORN in the country... regardless, i always love love love your work and this essay was no exception, u always deliver such insightful measured brilliant analysis
Oh, so confusing — Baker call her a first-gen immigrant directly in that piece! I think confusingly there are two definitions of “first gen” — when I google it it says the term both applies to people who immigrate and to children born to immigrant parents in the new country but that doesn’t really make sense lol so who knows. u are probably right! Either way thank you so much for reading and for sharing ur thoughts <3
Great review that described my experience of watching the movie better than I ever could. Felt like I spent the first half of the film just waiting for the other shoe to drop, so it was weird reading a bunch of reviews afterwards about how electric the romance was and how devastating the “twist” was. Like, it was never going to work out, and that’s how I felt the whole time.
My dislike of the movie has been influenced more by the crowd reactions to the movie and from what seems to be author’s intent. I didn’t get any rom or com from the movie and I don’t know if it actually helped sex workers. But removing the author and the reviews from the equation, and looking at the movie as a horror (like it actually felt when I watched it) has increased my respect of the film. Thank you!
I loved Anora (and have my own criticisms of it, of course) but I was struggling to put my thoughts into words and you did it perfectly, with nuance. I love love love this piece
Really loved this and had me analysing my own relationship to the heterosexual dream because I remember the first time I watched it I held out hope the entire time that Vanya wouldn’t go through with the divorce up until he says “Of course! Are you stupid?” which hit me like a car door. This was just a side quest for him. I felt stupid for believing him.
Her repetition of calling herself “wife” and Vanya “husband” tapped into something within me I thought myself to be too much of an anarchist to be swept up by. The repeated affirmation of those very grown up roles that exist at the intersection of security and romance. I am his wife. He is my husband. Those are real things you can’t take away at the drop of a hat. Turns out you can.
I also found Igor as a character really fascinating and am dumbfounded by the takes that the final scene is Ani finding true love with him. I have really loved the different interpretations and every time I watch it I see it in a different way. But currently I feel that the adrenaline has worn off, here she is having a real moment of vulnerability and human connection for the first time in the whole film, and that’s when she feels the shards of the fairytale in her hands. It was never real. How can she ever trust anything is real again.
I saved this essay for until after i had watched the film because i knew it would hit. These are quite literally the exact same thoughts and experiences I had while watching, especially the sickening pit in my stomach i felt watching Anora struggle. Itching to discuss this film with everyone I know now that it's famous
Would love your thoughts on Red Rocket too… I just think we’re giving Baker too much credit here with using sex workers as his subject matter or even an allegory. I feel like the messages/ critiques he’s sharing about the American Dream in both Anora and Red Rocket are so spoon fed to the audience so the use of sex workers (and esp the pedo/groomer in RR) is just egregious. He throws trope-y, slop writing behind undoubtedly great cinematography and gets celebrated for it.
But truly love and appreciate your analysis on the movie and its messaging- you’re the first/only person I was wanting to hear from lol
This was such a good read. I love everything you said about the scarf. That scene—and the end when she pleads with Vanya one last time, only to be laughed at, are where the movie stands out the most to me. I have felt that bitter humiliation more than once in my life, of having to accept the warmth of an object that existed primarily to hurt me. It is such a contradictory and insulting feeling. I agree that this movie is a nihilistic and sobering reality check.
Thank you for reading <3
the scarf was such a good allegory
There is countless evidence and quotes from Baker that a lot of the positives you credit the film for are projections from a media-optimist person, so to speak. Baker has said in a press conference for this film he believes sex work should be “decriminalized and unregulated,” while evidence shows this is only beneficial for pimps/brothels, not the sex workers. Baker has said Ani soon finds out that “[Igor] is even a teddy bear.” He calls the last scene “a catharsis.” There is evidence that he did not want to pay the sex workers he consulted (or even the crew members, as per stories from them as well as from IATSE themselves). There was no intimacy coordinator for Mikey Madison, a young and heretofore relatively unknown actress. Sean Baker clearly does not care about women or sex workers. He cares only about making his movie. Madison gave a great performance which I think is the only thing (other than the shots and colors) that is making this movie controversial rather than unanimously bad. The lack of development of her character in the writing whether intentional or not is harmful to sex workers and women everywhere and it is no wonder that the institution of Hollywood and the Oscars which has history in sexual abuse and union-busting is a fan of it.
I think this essay is interesting and well-written, and is the most optimistic possible take on the film, but I think the film is being given way too much credit. At the end of the day, no positive impact will come from this film other than some sex workers feeling seen, which ultimately does nothing if the film doesn’t humanize/portray them well in the first place. All sex work is exploitation and Anora doesn’t convey that. I think women liking this movie is just like Ani taking Vanya’s proposal. It was never for you.
There is perhaps some class commentary in the film but there are way better pieces of media to ingest if one is looking for class commentary.
this is an interesting perspective -- echoing the LARB piece I linked in the essay, I actually thought Baker's perspective on sex work in the film was incredibly nihilistic and did not read it as glamorizing or romanticizing sex work at all. The ending, to me, seemed like it actually confirmed the common narrative that sex work is inherently traumatizing and that sex workers are so exploited by their work that they cannot experience normal intimacy or love (it honestly reminded me of some Dworkin I've read on the issue, although that was surely not Baker's intention). I also strongly disagree that decriminalization only benefits pimps and brothels, although that's slightly besides the point (FOSTA/SESTA for instance has been unimaginably dangerous to sex worker lives). the most realistic thing you can say about the film imo is that it has very little coherent ideology, which is part of why i specify in the essay that I'm separating my ideas about the film from authorial intent; I also feel like i stated very clearly that I don't think Baker has made a meaningfully feminist film or anything, and that I have many criticisms of the ways he portrays sex workers and women. As I state in the essay, I believe that reflecting the conditions of women's abuse can result in reproducing those conditions & that dynamic in the film is very worthy of being criticized. liking a film, to me, means being interested in the ideas it brings to the table as a cultural object & is rarely connected to authorial intent. however I do also think the film had real artistic value and that it's not just good or interesting by accident -- so maybe we just disagree there!
I really appreciate your perspective on this as well. I think there is a lot of nuance lost when talking about this film no matter what, so to see well-written thoughts like yours I think creates a great dialogue, even if I disagree on some counts.
hi rayne! can you elaborate on what dworkin this reminded you of? obv right wing women as you mentioned, but where did she talk about sex workers & intimacy? (i’m taking a class on dworkin right now at bisr and we just finished pornography so i want to be sure i didn’t miss anything)
honestly was just referring generally to a relatively nihilistic attitude abt sex/intimacy under patriarchy I get from a lot of her work, but off the top of my head I believe there’s a part in RWW (might be 2nd chapter?) where she talks about the idea of a liberated “sexual intelligence” for women, I.e. a capacity for beautiful and transformative intimacy, and how it is destroyed / interrupted by the existence of prostitution & patriarchy in general. (Not saying I agree w this take)
ty for responding!! i started rww tonight so looking forward to reading that chapter
Sex worker here - Decriminalization is actually the ONLY policy that matters for the health and safety of sex workers everywhere. (There are other important policies and interventions of course, but without decriminalization none of them mean anything) I recommend you check out "Revolting Prostitutes" by Molly Smith and Juno Mac.
I will definitely read, thank you!
Sex workers should definitely not be criminalized, but sex work as a whole should not be normalized and left up to the free market, which is what Baker was implying in the full quote. “Unregulated” also makes no sense.
I work at a theater and was discussing Anora with a co-worker who had just watched it. Having seen it when it was first released I’ve had such a hard time wrapping my head around why I just don’t know if I actually thought it was a well done film or not. My largest criticism is despite a great performance from Mikey Madison, the character of Ani has little to no depth. I don’t need an extensive backstory, but I do need to see what she does when she’s not at work, who she hangs out with, what her interests are, etc. I don’t think Sean Baker does much to get us to see her as human, as you mentioned, beyond us being concerned for a vulnerable woman in a situation where she is once again being used by men. The only thing I could come up with is we’re meant to know so little about her because she keeps the men who visit her at work and seemingly everyone else at arm’s length. So essentially we only know her the way they do, but despite that are meant to recognize her precarious and dangerous situation. I still don’t believe that’s the case though. While I can acknowledge what this film accomplished on a smaller budget is impressive and could possibly lead the way for more recognition for indie films, I largely agree with your dissection of this movie. It expresses a lot of what I also feel about it.
I agree that it’s obvious that Baker’s intent is first and foremost (and perhaps exclusively) to make a great, entertaining “art” film. Like rf-q, I think it’s this agenda that lends Anora to fruitful commentary; it’s not blatant and easily readable propaganda or critique, no matter how much lip service to the “sex-worker” community Baker, Madison et al. have paid during the film’s promotion. Exploitation can be both appealing and harmful; Ani can be both shallow and cavernously deep (which I thought she was); a guy can be both tender and brutal; surrender can be both a defeat and a victory. Despite such incongruences, though, I thought the film’s core message was very obviously a certain pseudo-Christian, Marxist critique of the neoliberal female condition, emblematised by Ani https://toolongforacomment.substack.com/p/accidentally-abolitionist-why-radfems It’s no wonder “sex-work” advocates haven’t liked it at all!
left the movie thinking about a lot but the parts where she's cradled between vanya's arms as he mindlessly plays video games stuck with me for some reason. great essay!
those scenes really struck me too - it makes you remember at the end of the day they are both really really young
Yes! Vanya's character repulsed me. The ignorance, the self-indulgence, the obliviousness...
Yeah I agree for some reason I think I was most quietly angry in the scenes where she’s looking at him and holding him like a lifeline and he’s holding the game console and looking at the tv
i totally agree that anora’s interiority was demonstrated through mikey madison’s performance. i think in recent years there’s been an outsized desire for art to lay everything out explicitly for viewers, and i think that rarely makes for good art. i also find it interesting that baker keeps aligning the film with the sex working community as a whole. it’s important that he and the cast researched and tried to honor the community in the film.
but i came away thinking about *anora* and her story as an american woman at the mercy of her circumstances who still has faith in her destiny. i drew a million little parallels to the people in my life who have wanted so deeply to believe in a dream that could pull them out of their familial and economic difficulties, only to have their paths blocked by things many around them had never even thought about. i thought about the times i have confidently gotten into ambiguous, impossible romantic relationships but end up so badly wanting to believe in the promise of love. and how we often turn to familiar but hollow forms of validation at our lowest points. but maybe that serves baker’s point (non-rhetorical)? above all else, anora is a girl who wanted to live out the american dream.
all that to say, i really enjoyed reading your perspective. despite the horror, i did find humor and levity in the film, as we can in life, and i think that balance is why i’ll watch it again and again.
I also think Ani’s youth is important and under-discussed in the critiques. She thinks she’s better than all of the older workers in the club. There’s obviously still patriarchal hierarchy even within sex work, and in Ani’s case, the audience is seeing society’s status games (young women > old women) play out in this smaller context of sex work.
oh that’s interesting, i hadn’t considered the age dynamic. to me, she seemed to have good relationships with most of the women in the club sans Diamond who was consistently antagonistic. i think she and her best friend at the club may have been the only ones with enough youth to really believe that it was a true “cinderella” moment and felt some superiority in that. definitely agree that’s a symptom of patriarchal / heteronormative hierarchy playing out
I was also in a theater full of people who were laughing during the violent part (the first time I saw it) and I felt like I couldn’t breathe and I was literally twisting in my seat it was awful
"The erotics of class ascendency flirted enticingly with a dream of heterosexual normalcy that had long been out of my reach. The first time a heterosexual fantasy ever helped me cum, I was thinking about him calling me poor."
your analysis of the interdimensions of class and sex have always amazed me, but what struck me here is the deft candor of this piece. Your words never cease to feel like scholarship for my soul, in a way - you make me remember how to human better . Thank you for this - I'd love to use a quote of this essay for my review of Anora for FilmDaze :)
thank you !!! go for it <3
!!!!! you're my writing mecca !!!!! Will be sure to tag you in it <3
I don’t think a film where the main character who is a sex worker gets held and tied down by men all whilst screaming for help and it being framed as comedic……does any service for sex workers at all. Especially when most sex workers fear that
Completely agree
Yup
After seeing all the discourse on Twitter and every point becoming misconstrued, this has been a refreshing take to see. I feel like it’s lost on a loud minority of chronically online social media users that depiction ≠ endorsement and so people see Anora being humiliated for the sake of this stupid boy and think that’s the point without actually trying to grasp what it means. The film has its flaws in some parts but with this discourse, you’d think it was more than another typical Sean Baker movie about class and sex workers.
depiction ≠ endorsement being widely understood could drastically change the landscape of how we understand and critique media n I wish for that landscape everyday
you described the pit I had in my stomach throughout this whole movie - thank you. I have been trying (and largely failing) to find words for how sickening it felt to watch her go all in and then lose at every turn. I also read the last scene as "an image of complete alienation, total defeat," which made me feel so confused and disheartened. did we need another movie about a sex worker losing?
incredible essay (as usual) on a film i also haven't really been able to stop thinking about since i saw it. v interesting to see you feel the contrast between your nausea and apprehension at the 'henchmen restraining / fighting ani' bits and other peoples laughter because i felt that internally - as an eastern european who's personally known a non-zero number of soviet oligarchs, i found myself oscillating wildly between finding the film really funny in its portrayals of easteuro / slavic archetypes and deeply tragic in the slow unraveling of ani's vision of her own success story. the laughs that movie pulled out of me were like almost uncomfortable & jarring lmao
just a small aside - ani is not a first-gen immigrant. the link you used on that phrase has baker mention that her mother moved to america as a teenager so presumably ani is US-born, making her second-gen. sorry, this is really pedantic😭
that's so weird! i suppose there is that dual definition, i forget some people say 'first-gen' when i guess they mean first generation BORN in the country... regardless, i always love love love your work and this essay was no exception, u always deliver such insightful measured brilliant analysis
Oh, so confusing — Baker call her a first-gen immigrant directly in that piece! I think confusingly there are two definitions of “first gen” — when I google it it says the term both applies to people who immigrate and to children born to immigrant parents in the new country but that doesn’t really make sense lol so who knows. u are probably right! Either way thank you so much for reading and for sharing ur thoughts <3
this was so excellent. a very refreshing read
Great review that described my experience of watching the movie better than I ever could. Felt like I spent the first half of the film just waiting for the other shoe to drop, so it was weird reading a bunch of reviews afterwards about how electric the romance was and how devastating the “twist” was. Like, it was never going to work out, and that’s how I felt the whole time.
My dislike of the movie has been influenced more by the crowd reactions to the movie and from what seems to be author’s intent. I didn’t get any rom or com from the movie and I don’t know if it actually helped sex workers. But removing the author and the reviews from the equation, and looking at the movie as a horror (like it actually felt when I watched it) has increased my respect of the film. Thank you!
I loved Anora (and have my own criticisms of it, of course) but I was struggling to put my thoughts into words and you did it perfectly, with nuance. I love love love this piece
Thank you for reading <3
Really loved this and had me analysing my own relationship to the heterosexual dream because I remember the first time I watched it I held out hope the entire time that Vanya wouldn’t go through with the divorce up until he says “Of course! Are you stupid?” which hit me like a car door. This was just a side quest for him. I felt stupid for believing him.
Her repetition of calling herself “wife” and Vanya “husband” tapped into something within me I thought myself to be too much of an anarchist to be swept up by. The repeated affirmation of those very grown up roles that exist at the intersection of security and romance. I am his wife. He is my husband. Those are real things you can’t take away at the drop of a hat. Turns out you can.
I also found Igor as a character really fascinating and am dumbfounded by the takes that the final scene is Ani finding true love with him. I have really loved the different interpretations and every time I watch it I see it in a different way. But currently I feel that the adrenaline has worn off, here she is having a real moment of vulnerability and human connection for the first time in the whole film, and that’s when she feels the shards of the fairytale in her hands. It was never real. How can she ever trust anything is real again.
I saved this essay for until after i had watched the film because i knew it would hit. These are quite literally the exact same thoughts and experiences I had while watching, especially the sickening pit in my stomach i felt watching Anora struggle. Itching to discuss this film with everyone I know now that it's famous
Would love your thoughts on Red Rocket too… I just think we’re giving Baker too much credit here with using sex workers as his subject matter or even an allegory. I feel like the messages/ critiques he’s sharing about the American Dream in both Anora and Red Rocket are so spoon fed to the audience so the use of sex workers (and esp the pedo/groomer in RR) is just egregious. He throws trope-y, slop writing behind undoubtedly great cinematography and gets celebrated for it.
But truly love and appreciate your analysis on the movie and its messaging- you’re the first/only person I was wanting to hear from lol