Anora is far more a fairytale than any of its director Sean Baker’s past portraits of sex workers. Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket – at times, they can be a little sentimental, but they’re deeply and affectionately embedded in their respective worlds. Anora, however, imagines a stripper Cinderella if she knew her dream was propped up by nothing but vape fumes and G-strings. She holds on, because who wouldn’t? Yet even the faintest of breaths will cause the whole castle to come crumbling down.
The princess here is Ani (Mikey Madison). Her full name is Anora, but like her Uzbek heritage and use of spoken Russian, it’s a part of her that she tries to conceal behind a customer service smile and maternal attentiveness – all necessary to play the part of the friendly American stripper. Such projected confidence makes her immediately attractive to Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), son of a Russian oligarch, with cash practically falling out of his pockets. He pays for a dance, then sex, then a week-long “girlfriend experience”.
