Flasz On Film

I don’t want to say that the Cinderella archetype is as old as the concept of storytelling itself, mostly because I don’t have enough data to support such a claim and also because I’m too lazy to do the necessary research to have some solid footing for this opening paragraph to stand on, but it’s pretty damn old. Between La Traviata, Pretty Woman, My Fair Lady and many variations of Cinderella itself, this rags-to-riches template about love blossoming at the grinding interface between classes has remained consistently ubiquitous. And if you extend the definition of what a Cinderella story is to include the perennial underdog narrative too—which is a valid exercise in its own right—then you might realize that a good chunk of great stories ever committed to celluloid would qualify too. Think Rocky, Billy Elliot, Ratatouille or even Legally Blonde. 

We just love the idea of watching losers becoming winners, put plainly and simply, which the Cinderella archetype embodies, as it subcutaneously injects a small dose of hope into our bloodstream that maybe one day some Fairy Godmother would descend upon us completely out of nowhere to give us a shot at greatness. However, we must remember—and we often either choose not to pay attention to this—that the culturally persistent mythology surrounding the Cinderella story is a by-product of insidious reality where for many of us putting ourselves by our bootstraps and working our assess off is never going to become a ticket out of destitution and that we might need a miracle, or at least an element of luck, to move between rungs on the social mobility ladder. To break out of the vicious cycle of misery and privation, what seems to do the trick isn’t hard graft, industriousness or fortitude, but rather the arrival of Prince Charming or another wealthy benefactor who’d whisk us into the life of opulence and privilege. And the many iterations of the Cinderella story seem to reinforce the idea that it’s overall a heartwarming experience to live vicariously through the story of “the one who got out of the gutter.” Or at least it would have been the norm in the past.  

But nearing the halfway point of the third decade of the twenty-first century, it would seem that the very concept of deriving hope and warmth from watching another archetypal interpretation of the Cinderella story is becoming increasingly out of step with the observable reality we’re experiencing in our own lives. In fact, we’ve been on this trajectory for a while now as the last decade has become replete with eat-the-rich stories rather than let-the-rich-lend-us-a-hand ones. And now, with the middle class disappearing as the chasm between the obscenely wealthy and incredibly poor keeps widening with soaring living expenses, unaffordable rents and increasingly volatile job markets, the Cinderella story is simply for the birds.  

Which is what Anora is—a Cinderella story for the generation that would look at Pretty Woman and dismiss it with a smirk and a half-uttered “that’s cute” followed by a pronounced eye roll. Sean Baker, who wrote and directed it, is a filmmaker who has spent his working life telling stories about people living on the fringe of the superficially wealthy American society: outcasts, jobless, sex workers etc. His camera is interested in keeping in focus the kinds of people the Disneyfied Hollywood glitz-and-glamour prestige movies choose to keep in their collective blind spots: the streetwalking sex workers at Christmas (Tangerine), homeless Floridians literally living in the shadow of the Walt Disney World (The Florida Project) or ex-porn actors attempting to reintegrate into society (Red Rocket)… or a young stripper/escort working in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in Anora.  

That’s how we meet the titular character (played by Mikey Madison) in this modern take on the Cinderella archetype, or rather a slick subversion of the Pretty Woman template. She’s a young sex worker who dances on laps of wealthy middle-aged men who likely have daughters Anora’s age. Sometimes her services go a few steps further if the money is right and the client doesn’t look like an imminent threat. She shares an apartment she only goes back to sleep in. Anora lives paycheck to paycheck, counting every bill slipped into her underwear by men mesmerized by the supple beauty of her young body.  

As the archetype dictates, things take a turn for Anora when she is asked to spend time with a group of young and wealthy Russian clients, presumably because she understands Russian herself and speaks it a little as well. Something sparks between her and Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), a wiry-looking twenty-something whose forwardness and confidence match his aloof I-don’t-give-two-shits-ism to give enough of an impression that he leads a life of opulence a workaday human being like Anora simply doesn’t have the faculties to properly parse. She is invited to a mansion where Vanya parties, plays videogames and smokes weed while the mundanities of life like shopping, cleaning and getting from A to B are taken care of by a staff of nameless and mostly voiceless servants.  

However, in contrast to Richard Gere’s Edward whose fortune is a product of his own work as a corporate raider, Vanya spends money he never earned. His father is a Russian oligarch, awash in fortune of undisclosed provenance. So, in a way, Vanya is the closest thing to a prince you’d find today outside of what you’d call traditional aristocracy. He’s not Saltburn-rich He’s Putin’s son-rich. But it ultimately doesn’t matter for Anora, or anyone else in Vanya’s entourage because at the end of the day, money is money and Vanya represents either an opportunity for those in his orbit to permanently slingshot out of poverty or, at least temporarily, enjoy the radiant heat of Vanya’s wealth and have the kind of fun they could otherwise only see rolling through their Instagram feeds.  

Thus, Sean Baker weaves what initially presents as an enumeration of the Cinderella story with Anora entering Vanya’s life much the same way Julia Roberts’ Vivian entered Edward’s life in Pretty Woman. They meet, Vanya pays for Anora’s company and hence whatever intimacy they share is completely transactional, but something blossoms sprouts them and Vanya suggests they get married while partying in Las Vegas. Perhaps on a whim. Perhaps to spite his controlling parents back in Russia. And for a moment there, the movie looks like a modern beat-for-beat remake of Pretty Woman, but the thing is that it is not… because the world in which this story is set is markedly different from the world in which Richard Gere and Julia Roberts were falling for each other. It’s a universe where the obscenely rich treat those around them like toys to be played with and discarded after use. It’s a world where people spend money they didn’t earn on things they don’t deserve. It’s a world where people make life-changing decisions on behalf of others without even acknowledging their agency, let alone humanity. 

You’d be well within your rights, therefore, to think that Sean Baker’s Anora is a solemn takedown of the current state of play at the interface between the wealthy and the poor. And it is… but to be perfectly honest, this sober analysis of what Baker wants this movie to do—which is, as best as I can succinctly describe it, a hybrid of Pretty Woman and Spring Breakers with a potent social commentary fit for the modern post-pandemic viewer living in the age of influencers, easy money and fake wealth—comes only towards the end of the film and truly hits home long after the credits have rolled. And what happens during the movie is best described as a modern-day comedy of errors tipping its hat to Elaine May and John Cassavetes while operating technically within the parameters of a post-Herzogian/Soderberghian aesthetic Harmony Korine and Sean Baker have both been particularly keen on. Anora has the wit of Mikey and Nicky, the ecstatic truth of Husbands, the moodiness of The Girlfriend Experience and the bite of the aforementioned Spring Breakers. Imagine that.  

This concoction of inspirations, themes and moods makes Anora a truly unique beast because the movie itself is irreverently funny—hilarious even—when its Pretty Woman predicament becomes a plot device, which allows Baker to move his camera between locations and to capture the performers’ Cassavetesian energy with glee and abandon. Mikey Madison owns the screen in a way Gena Rowlands would have in a movie like Minnie and Moskowitz. She’s organic, raw and unflinching but also exceedingly sharp with her comebacks and zingers—a true marvel, if you ask me.  

In addition, the entire conceit of Vanya and Anora getting married and this act sending Vanya’s parents into a tailspin and precipitating a whole slew of incredibly funny predicaments, nearly all of which involve Anora interacting with Vanya’s security detail Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov) and their handler Toros (Karren Karagulian). At some point, this subverted Cinderella tale levels up to include a kidnapping and a road trip adventure because Vanya takes off the minute he realizes his parents are fuming at the fact he married a prostitute, leaving Anora to fend for herself and deal with Vanya’s goons. Which is as poignant as it is hilarious because in this comedy of errors full of slapstick, nudity and sex a deep and potent commentary is hidden that further bolsters the thematic space intrinsic to the Cinderella story. Anora, a working-class sex worker teams up with Vanya’s goons who are also working-class henchmen to fix problems created by a spoiled Prince Charming used to spending his parents’ millions like it was pocket change. And somewhere in this Elaine May-esque screwball mess blossoms kinship between Anora and Igor… and Sean Baker captured it all on film with enough confidence and bravado to make this entire movie seem momentarily as though it was fully improvised or serendipitously captured by a by-stander with a camera.  

Now, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I think it is fair to see Anora as the movie of the year. In fact, the jury in Cannes thought this way already as they awarded Baker the coveted Palme d’Or. However, I don’t necessarily want you to think this is just the best movie of this calendar year. In many ways it may be because I don’t think I’ve seen a movie this year that moved me this much. It’s uproariously funny, tenderly bittersweet and incredibly lush with its visuals, all the while it is nearly single-handedly carried by Mikey Madison’s towering performance as a sex worker with enough sass and bluster to serve a handful of otherwise decently caustic movies.  

But it’s the movie of the year perhaps because of the way it underscores a change that has taken place within our culture over the years and emphasizes that we no longer live in a world where the Cinderella story has a place. Prince Charming is fake. The divide between classes is unbridgeable. But the need for belonging and emotional warmth remains unchanged despite the fact intimacy has been effectively reduced to transactional sexual activity. Anora is a powerful piece with a potential to help us define the relationship between classes and maybe to reverse course, if that’s at all possible. Baker’s work is extraordinary in the way it infuses a guerilla piece of Cassavetes-esque verité with satirical notes reminding one of Ruben Östlund (if only a little) and visual bravado of Harmony Korine.