$3,000 for a Week as a Girlfriend: Pretty Woman relies on a shockingly cold premise. A financial transaction, of all things a businesslays the foundation of the RomCom classic with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere before real feelings find their way into the film. All of the exaggeration of 1990s Hollywood cinema was necessary to make this love story work.
What would this love story look like today? This is exactly the question asked by Anora, the new film by Sean Baker. After the American director and screenwriter let the dreams of Disney World (Florida Project) and Hollywood (Red Rocket) shatter on the cliff of cruel reality, he tells one dark Cinderella storywhich resists the charms of Pretty Woman for 139 minutes.
Because in Baker’s America there is only business and no love. Or maybe it is?
Now in cinemas: Sean Baker’s Anora is the most restless New York odyssey since The Black Diamond
Anora begins in the neon lights of a New York strip club. Ani (Mikey Madison) earns her money here at night. She sleeps during the day. In between, a smoke break in the cold. A cycle without perspective. It is only when she meets young Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of Russian oligarchs, that a chance to escape becomes apparent to her: Vanya offers her $15,000 so that Ani can spend a week with him.
You can watch the trailer for Anora here:
Anora – Trailer (German) HD
In the midst of partying, the two hurriedly get married in Las Vegas. Ani sees a life of luxury, Wanya sees the perfect opportunity for the green card to become independent of his parents. But as soon as they find out about the marriage, they send the priest and Vanya’s godfather Toros (Karren Karagulian) with his henchmen Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov) to solve the problem.
And this problem solving is staged by Sean Baker restless odyssey. Anora leads us from one cold place to the next. Be it the unfriendly villa of the oligarch family or the icy beach of Brighton Beach: there is nowhere you want to linger. There is a hustle and bustle in the film that has not been seen in a film since The Black Diamond with Adam Sandler, which was also set in New York.
Funny and disturbing at the same time: With Anora, Sean Baker has made an epic of ambiguous nuances
Anora is a stress test that demands everything right up to the last second, but it is also a brilliant balancing act between genres that initially don’t fit together at all. Is there even room for a naive love story in this fight for survival? Can slapstick interludes easily be combined with a home invasion thriller that shows three men in an abusive situation against a young woman?
Baker often walks a very fine line, but that’s exactly what makes his film so exciting. Every scene is charged with ambivalent undertones and asks us to take different perspectives in order to find out who is using whom and with what motivation. Because every central character is written in a multi-faceted manner and played in a nuanced way, so that prejudices are often refuted.
A lot happens in the almost two and a half hours of Anora: people scream, kick and insult each other. They bite, scratch and cry. Some even escape from the film, leaving behind a great deal of uncertainty as to what is really going on. Especially when the film questions the argument of love with regard to Ani and Wanya’s marriage. Is this really just a contract or something more?
In Anora, everything is a business until a real emotion completely derails the characters
After Florida Project and Red Rocket, it should come as no surprise that Baker has made another film that shows the ugly side of the American dream and in which every character is busy trying to get one step further themselves. Everything is a transaction in a world with clear balances of power. Anyone who fearlessly questions the hierarchies, like Ani, causes chaos – and contradictions.
One venal rebel storms through the film as the protagonist. Calm and yet disoriented. The rough, bumbling henchmen develop a conscience, while the supposedly innocent youth that Vanya exudes is exposed as irresponsible recklessness. The characters constantly get in each other’s way and push each other away. And Baker keeps packing them into a small space.
In the end, they all play by the same rules: the rules of business, which means Anora turns up the cool element that continues to fade into the background in Pretty Woman to the point where it’s unbearable. Every character tests boundaries or authority and see how far she gets with it. At this point it becomes tragic: although no real tears are actually shed, a sincere escape fantasy does exist.
To Disney World, to Hollywood or at least out of the strip club where we meet Anora at the beginning of the film. With Baker, dreams are always within reach until they burst into heartbreaking, bitter images. However, this time he adds a thought that makes you tremble: What if there was actually a real feeling on this journey of claims and agreements? Outrageous.
Anora has been running ever since October 31, 2024 in German cinemas.