Lily Lady is an artist from New York City. Lily’s journalism can be found in Office and Dirty Magazine. Their latest poetry collection is NDA (Far West Press, 2024) and their feature film, Sam’s World, will be available through Factory25 at the end of October 2024. (Photo by Max Lakner.)
About halfway through Sean Baker’s latest film, Anora, the titular character – or Ani, as she’s called in her Brooklyn hometown – is confronted by two Russian thugs, one of whom pejoratively calls her a prostitute.
“I’m a whore? Your mother’s a fucking whore!” she retorts.
Vanya, Ani’s new client-turned-husband, interjects on her behalf.
“She’s an erotic dancer,” he intones in heavily accented English.
It’s played for laughs and it gets them. Big time.
The scene continues for what feels like an excessively long chunk of the film’s already lengthy two-hour-19-minute run time. During the escalating violence of the encounter, Ani breaks one of their noses and lands some solid punches. The Russian goons sent by Vanya’s parents eventually tie her up with a telephone cord.
“Rape!” she screams.
“Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape!”
“Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape!”
They gag her with a piece of clothing laying around to stop her from yelling any further. Sometime around then, I switched my already lukewarm affinity for Ani in favor of the Russians instead. I was as sick of Ani’s screaming as they seemed to be.
As a full-time sex worker from New York City, I honestly couldn’t make heads or tails of the movie. The central question I kept returning to was: how does Ani’s work as a stripper inform anything about her character? Is centering the film in this world additive in any way?
Ani is played by the Los Angeles native, full-time actor Mikey Madison, who told MovieMaker Magazine that she watched stripper mukbang videos to research for the role. “What stood out for me was the Tupperware the dancers used to carry the food,” she said, to which Baker added, “That is such an important thing … I’ve always been looking for those little details that are just like everyday, identifiable, common things.”
This tidbit made its way on screen: we see Ani on a break at the club, trading barbs with a manager while eating out of a Tupperware.
In the same interview, Baker contended that while sex work is often “romanticized in storytelling,” he had a revelatory experience while “interviewing an adult film star … she just realized at that moment that she forgot to put her clothes in the dryer that morning. And that was something that was just so normal, so everyday, so universal that we can all identify with.”
If one of Baker’s stated goals is to “normalize” sex work, why create such a far-flung storyline? Vanya is a 21-year-old, stunningly beautiful young man with seemingly endless money to spend. Presented as a client, this feels unrealistic.
Perhaps more consequentially, Ani’s worldview doesn’t make that much sense to me. Especially her extreme offense at being called a prostitute. She’s a stripper who takes private clients outside the club … what am I missing? While New York City’s sex worker community is diverse and multifaceted, it’s certainly more of a community than other places I’ve worked. Underground networks and Signal groups exist to support safety in the workplace (sharing numbers about known clients, tips about certain hotels, etc.), provide resources, and host events. There’s a more conscious push to incorporate a larger worldview around capitalism, criminality and the state. Some of these topics are covered in the pages of Dirty Magazine and Petit Mort. Direct support is provided by organizations like GLITS, workshops from DecrimNY and free healthcare for sex workers is accessible from the COIN clinic at Callen Lorde. Traversing these spaces can foster solidarity, allow social networks to form and provide a less isolated experience of the work.
Even though Ani was called a prostitute by a hostile outsider – very different than coming from a like-minded comrade – her shock at the word and general lack of a holistic perspective and identification with her work doesn’t track for me. While every sex worker in New York has their own unique experience, Ani’s character is far less interesting than the informed, radical, anarchic and politically engaged sex workers in the city that I know and love.
All that being said, I don’t think every film on this subject has the moral obligation of “accurate” portrayal. I don’t preemptively balk at the numerous outsiders who make movies about sex work. Anyone can make a good film about anything, since fiction is fiction and identitarian “authenticity” can ring hollow anyway. It’s understandable to center a film within this titillating world and then build out a fantastical storyline from there. But the fantastical storyline provided in Anora feels devoid of the heart – and the engaging dialogue – that would justify its departure from a more naturalistic portrayal of this world.
The scene in which Ani gets tied up by the Russians is followed by a sequence in which they take her on a hunt to find Vanya, who’d run out of the mansion before things got violent. In certain respects, the film’s frantic tone echoes Uncut Gems, but instead of a Diamond District enhanced by elevated realism, Anora shows us south Brooklyn with locations we’ve seen before (for example, Coney Island’s Luna Park). Further, Uncut Gems gives us the raw performance of former dominatrix Julia Fox; in Anora, Mikey Madison fails to captivate within the loose, meandering dialogue.
Is it anti-feminist to compare the two leading roles, played by women in each film? Maybe. But it feels as though Baker was reaching for a place that Uncut Gems found, both from a casting and story perspective. It’s no strike against Madison that she wasn’t able to elevate a character who bickers snidely with her coworkers at the strip club and fires off generic missives to her sister. (Sister: “Did you pick up milk?” Ani: “Does it look like there’s milk in the fridge?”)
Baker’s previous films, especially Red Rocket (2021) and The Florida Project (2017), created robust and believable atmospheres. We watched Bria Vinaite’s character turn tricks at an extended-stay motel in Kissimmee, Florida. Simon Rex embodied a newly retired porn star returning to his hometown of Texas City, Texas. Importantly, both films, along with Tangerine (2015), stayed put, never straying far from their geographical place of origin. In Anora, we get extended montages of 20-year-olds partying (in a casino, on a private jet, in an infinity pool, in clubs, in Vegas) and the international stakes of Vanya’s forced Russian return. Baker’s films shine in the claustrophobia of a hyper-localized story, rather than the wider range offered by Anora. In the latter, more attention seems to have been given to wowing the audience with the sheer wealth of Vanya’s family than in building out characters with the emotional infrastructure necessary to give the plot any stakes.
Baker’s eighth directorial feature makes clear his continued desire for proximity to sex worker narratives; it ultimately doesn’t have the same resonance as his previous films.
On my walk home from the theater, I thought about how Anora marks a new level of commercial success for Baker. It’s been called his most expensive film yet, and while the exact budget hasn’t been confirmed as of this writing, it’s estimated in the $2-5 million range.
While the financial constraints of true independent filmmaking often force directors to make concessions, they can also provide an opportunity to use those limitations to develop tension within and between characters.
I wondered what Anora would have been like if Baker had half a million dollars to film it.
The day after I saw Anora, I went to see James Blake in concert at the Los Angeles Theater. It was one of his first sets as a newly independent artist after over a decade signed to Polydor Records. To witness an artist seemingly put the Big Business™ toothpaste back in the tube in favor of a relaxed, intimate set was exhilarating.
“I feel nervous about this next phase,” he said in between songs, about his decision to release music on his own label moving forward. Blake further articulated his decision as a way to connect more directly to his audience and to eschew industry machinations that separated him from his craft.
“I’m making a lot less money now,” he continued. Then he burst out laughing. The crowd laughed too, feeling his sheer sense of joy and newfound freedom.
