Anora: Fairytale of Heartbreak
Sean Baker’s Anora is a rollercoaster Cinderella story that takes viewers on a wild goose chase. The story follows exotic dancer Anora “Ani” Mikheeva, who is dissatisfied with her life and longing for something more. That is until she meets Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov, the immature and dissolute son of Russian oligarchs with seemingly endless money and status. Being the only dancer at the club who speaks Russian, Ani immediately infatuates Vanya, beginning her Cinderella story.
The pair exchange numbers, leading Vanya to semi-regularly ask Ani to come over for sex in exchange for generous pay. Appreciating the change of pace in her life and exposure to a world of luxury, opulence, and excitement, Ani finds herself frequently saying yes to Vanya’s offers of extravagant escapades. When he eventually asks her to be his “horny girlfriend" for a week in exchange for $15,000, she says yes. As the young couple continues to spend more time together, traveling as far as Las Vegas, Vanya eventually brings up the idea of marriage. Ani is skeptical, but Vanya insists he is genuinely in love with her. Ani decides to trust him, and the lovers marry in one of Vegas’ iconic Little White Chapels. Eventually returning to the peace of Vanya’s Brooklyn mansion, Ani quits her job at the club, dedicating herself to being Vanya’s full-time wife. The couple decides to live happily ever after.
At least until the details of their marriage get back to Vanya’s parents. Enraged and confused, they book the next available flight to the United States and send three henchmen to get the marriage annulled by the time of their arrival. Vanya flees, leaving behind a confused and enraged Ani with the three Russian henchmen: Toros, Garnick, and Igor. Ani’s happily ever after is shattered right before her eyes. She has her wedding ring forcibly taken from her in an incredibly comedic fight scene, where Mikey Madison delivers the absolute performance of a lifetime. The henchmen attempt to enforce her collaboration, assuring her that she will be paid generously for her troubles and that Vanya doesn’t actually love her. But Ani insists that they’re lying. She only joins the henchmen with the goal of finding her husband and getting her ring back; beginning the countdown to find her missing prince and get the marriage annulled.
From the absurdity of running around Brighton Beach trying to find a rich kid to annul a Vegas wedding to the comical mundanity of dealing with parking tickets and car sickness, the second act of the film truly shines in humor and comedic performances. However, despite all of this, you can’t help but feel a looming sadness and uncertainty about what is to come for Ani after finding Vanya. The final nail in the coffin for our Cinderella begins with the annulment. Any hope, any illusion of a fairytale truly shatters at this point as Vanya’s true character as an immature, stunted, young adult is revealed. The absolute venom from the Zakharov family, especially from his mother, forces Anora to face reality — even if Vanya loves her, he doesn’t have the balls to defend her against his family and truly respect her as his wife. Vanya chooses to adhere to tradition and family, abandoning Ani without financial support. She gets kicked out of the mansion, losing her life of luxury and forcing her to return to the mundanity of her life before. Heartbreak after heartbreak, her fairytale descends from a Disney fantasy to something much more akin to the Brothers Grimm.
Even with a fairytale-esque plot, director Sean Baker successfully elevates elements of the human experience, highlighting young love, immaturity, parental expectations, and the injustice of having to clean up messes while the maker remains unscathed, all while tackling this idea of mobility into such a privileged class. A human being has a statistically better chance of getting struck by lightning multiple times than winning the lottery and joining the top 0.1%. Anora almost reached that in her intertangling with Vanya, only to be shut out at the absolute last second. It's a fairytale with a tragic ending, where the prince remains in his sheltered castle and our Cinderella’s magical spell wore off with no chance of being saved. Filled with excitement, humor, stomach-churning anxiety, and ultimately, heartbreak in the search for something better, Baker does a wonderful job of conveying a tragic Cinderella story through a non-traditional lens.