‘Anora’ movie review: a dazzling critique of modern love and misogyny

It comes as no surprise to anyone that the current landscape of finding love and stability is pretty bleak; there are adverts for divorce apps along the tunnels of the tube and the promotion of technology in which we have to pay money to get a foot in the algorithm and find love. Within capitalism, romantic love has been commodified, and this is exactly the subject that Sean Baker concerns himself with in his latest film, Anora.

In Baker’s anti-fairy tale, we follow New York stripper Anni, who impulsively meets and marries the son of a Russian oligarch after a whirlwind romance. But her dreams of love and stability are quickly shattered as his parents try to annul their marriage, reminded of the ever-present limitations of class and womanhood.

At first, the story first feels like an unserious and harmless roller-coaster – we’re lured in by the glorious chaos and noise of the New York clubbing scene, a sensory overload of alluring imagery and pulsating music as Anora/Anni flirts and dances her way through each night. Mikey Madison is ferocious and wildly entertaining, and through her charming schmoozing and small talk, we learn that she is a textbook hustler, shimmying her way up the ladder of social mobility to a better life.

And it is here that we are introduced to Ivan – he’s endearing, but in a slightly pathetic way. He seems eager and harmless, like the kind of guy that would play Minecraft with a headset and overthink his Hinge prompts. But Baker wants us to be disarmed by him; he wants us to think that he is genuine and non-threatening, that Anni holds power over him for being beautiful and in possession of something that he desires. And so, she agrees to become his ‘girlfriend’ for the week; attending parties at his house, playing video games and having sex. But after an impulsive shotgun wedding in Las Vegas, a nightmarish goose chase ensues as Anni is held hostage by a group of Russian cronies as they try to track down Ivan and end their marriage, desperately defending their love and the validity of their relationship.

After eventually finding him, we want Ivan to fight for this class-defying, whirlwind romance, but he harshly retracts his love, saying that she was just a ‘hooker’ and silly to believe any of it was real. Baker disarms the audience through his portrayal of Ivan as a harmless rich kid that is merely in awe of a woman like Anni, that he sees himself as lucky for being the recipient of her attention. But we know that this is not emblematic of our current culture, and he cruelly pulls the rug out from under our feet, with Anni trying to mask her own pride and hurt over being used in this way.

It’s sobering and emotionally devastating, highlighting how dehumanised we have become by normalising transactional relationships, with the value of a woman being reduced to sex. And what’s particularly evil about this, is that Ivan is initially painted as someone who is leagues below Anni, someone who constantly admires her physical beauty and how lucky he is to be with her. But ultimately, a beautiful woman is seen as a commodity that can be possessed, and with the colossal wealth gap between them, Ivan holds a level of power that Anni can’t compete with.

The final scene to Anora is perhaps the most confrontational from Baker’s entire filmography. The director is known for his deliberately sugar-coated endings that choose to linger in the dreams of the characters, whether that be an imagined trip to Disneyland or finally achieving success in an industry you’ve been rejected from. But here, we see Anni as she returns to reality, discarded like an object, attempting to mask her own vulnerability and pain with the prickly jokes and bluntness we saw from her at the beginning, back when she had confidence and her self-worth hadn’t been mocked and belittled. And then, the laughably docile Russian bodyguard gifts her the wedding ring that she had returned. It should be a nice moment, as it’s the only act of true kindness that we’ve seen towards her.

But Anni reacts in line with how she views her own worth and initiates sex with him, repaying him in the only way she knows how, her worth reduced to just her body. But as it goes on, he tries to kiss her and she recoils, beginning to fight back, distrusting of true affection or intimacy and what the cost of that would be for her. And after fighting against him, she eventually resists, and the film ends with her breaking down in tears, allowing herself to feel hurt in her own powerlessness.

Baker has created a shattering odyssey of love in a modern world, a film that feels more urgent than his others in the way he chooses to end it, exposing a society that has been corrupted by materialism and our misogynistic dating standards. There is no dream sequence or faint optimism; just a woman who has been punished for being briefly hopeful for a fairy-tale ending, longing for stability and a human love story in a heartless world.

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