Movie trivia buffs know that the original script for Pretty Woman was not a frothy romcom but a gritty dark comedy about the dehumanizing nature of sex work. My theory is that the filmmaker Sean Baker, that cinematic poet of the disenfranchised, knew about that script, too. Anora is his version of Pretty Woman and it’s all we could’ve hoped for—a masterwork that combines the deadpan cinematography of a Jim Jarmusch film, the exuberant profanity of a Martin Scorsese film, and Baker’s own scuzzy, funny, aching dreamscapes.
To say that relative newcomer Mikey Madison gives a breakthrough performance in the title role is an understatement—it feels as though she’s been shot out of a cannon, fully formed and ready to conquer the world. (I loved her as Pamela Adlon’s precocious daughter in Better Things, but I had no idea she could do this.)
Madison’s Anora—she prefers to go by Ani—is an exotic dancer at a strip club in Manhattan. There may be no sex in the Boom-Boom room but there’s lots of grinding and groping. Ani confidently prances from man to man at the club, sidling up to them, flirting, offering a private dance, which they rarely refuse.
The work seems dangerous but Ani is clearly not afraid—and her tough-New-York-girl persona plays a significant role in the film.
One night, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the layabout, party-boy son of an oligarch, comes into the club with his entourage, asking if any of the dancers speak Russian. It turns out that Ani’s grandmother is Russian so she understands the language completely and speaks it haltingly. She’s assigned to their table.
Ivan is immediately smitten with her—although he’s a horny and drunk 21 year old; he’d probably be smitten by a sex-bot—and when Ani takes him to the private room he cheerfully announces, “I loooooove America!”
Ivan (aka Vanya) is skinny and cute with a mop of shaggy hair—he’s been called the Russian Timothée Chalamet—and he has the happy-go-lucky demeanor of a child in a neverending toy store.
He eventually invites Ani to his home and it’s not just any home—it’s an enormous mansion, complete with an elevator, a full bar, daily maid service, and a garage filled with fancy cars. When he’s not drinking, getting high, or playing video games, Ivan is fond of skidding around the polished wood floor like he’s on skates. He also loves sex, especially sex with Ani, so he makes a proposal.
He’ll pay her $10,000 to spend the week with him, as his girlfriend.
She counters with $15,000, which he agrees to.
He then cracks that she shouldn’t have accepted any less than $30,000. (This was the explicit reference to Pretty Woman that sealed my theory.)
The first hour or so of Anora plays like a dream—as Ivan and Ani have sex, get high, and cavort around the city. Ivan’s charmingly broken English and wide-eyed glee over, well, pretty much everything, makes him a uniquely amusing and nonthreatening companion.
“Isn’t my life freaking great?” he basically says at all times—and who could argue?
So Ani agrees to fly out with him to Vegas, which is where he impulsively asks her to marry him (are there any other kinds of proposals in Vegas?). He means it, he insists—he loves her, and if they get married he’ll be able to stay in America and piss off his parents.
Even this tough girl, with her armor of New York cool, can’t help but to be swept off her feet and she agrees. They get married at the Little White Wedding Chapel. She quits her job and moves in with him.
It’s all a beautiful dream—Alice in Oligarch World—and we know it can’t last, but we enjoy it all the same. (When Ani tells a friend from the club that she hopes Ivan will take her to Disney Land, a childhood dream, my heart broke a little bit.)
Then word gets to Ivan’s parents back in Russian that their son married a “hooker” and they call upon their network of associates in New York to get the marriage annulled.
First two henchmen, an impatient Armenian (Vache Tovmasyan) and a sad-eyed Russian (Yura Borisov), show up and muscle their way into the home. In a panic, Ivan runs, leaving Ani behind. This is our first indication that their love may not quite be as enduring as we might’ve hoped.
Ani puts up a fight—scratching, clawing, throwing things, anything to get these guys away from her. They’re scared of her; they weren’t expecting such ferocity—she even breaks the Armenian’s nose—but they are finally able to subdue her.
They are then joined by the boss, a local handler named Toros (Karren Karagulian), who seems very anxious about landing on the wrong side of the Ivan’s father’s wrath. (We know how oligarchs handle their enemies in Russia.)
In fact, all the Russian mercenaries seem panicked. They must find Ivan and get that marriage annulled. So they pile into a Cadillac SUV, a furious Ani in tow, trying to find a drunk Russian boy in the city.
This is all played for laughs, albeit laughs with an undercurrent of menace. Much as we know Ani can take care of herself, these thugs mean business. So the film turns into an absurdist dark comedy as Ani and her Russian henchmen search for Ivan, sharing his pictures like he’s a kid on a milk carton. Ani still hopes against hope that it’s all been a misunderstanding, that Ivan will come to her rescue, that their love with endure.
At the end of Pretty Woman, the sex worker lands the multimillionaire. But we fear there will be no happily ever after for Ani. We simply hope she can survive the night.