Anora (2024) – Anora-ble

Released: 26th December 2024
Seen: 22nd February 2025

When it comes to film, stories about sex workers are often played badly. Be they stories about strippers, porn stars or escorts there’s always this vibe that the person doing the sex work (usually a woman, let’s be honest) requires saving from the industry. She might be tough but she’s also a damsel in distress who is only doing this job because she has no choice. Recently there have been some films that are at least trying to improve how they portray people in that industry, films like Hustlers make them into a charming gaggle of powerful women who control their destinies, films like X or Maxxxine present porn stars as whole beings (albeit beings that end up being victims of killers but still, they’re people who deserve dignity) and then there’s Anora. One of the big Oscar darlings of the year with 6 nominations, Anora presents a sex worker with rough edges who is still a human being that doesn’t deserve the shit she’s put through and it’s a wildly fascinating time.

Anora focuses on Anora “Ani” Mikheeva (Mikey Madison), a worker at a high-end strip club called Headquarters in Brooklyn. Ani seems to have a balance figured out, she performs at the club regularly but doesn’t seem to let it interfere with her real life. One night while working at the club Ani is asked to spend some time with Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch who appreciates that Anora knows Russian so he can speak in his native language. Things seem to be going well, the two of them have a nice time, Vanya pays for Ani’s time as they agreed, they spend a lot of time together outside the club and Vanya even pays Ani to be his fake girlfriend for a while. This all culminates in them doing what a lot of wild crazy young people do if they have a night or two in Vegas and get married. In general, things seem to be going well for the two who are living a high life as a pair of young eager adults… and then Vanya’s family finds out that their son married a sex worker and the shit hits the fan.

Anora has something of a tightrope to walk on in how it handles its topic of sex workers and surprisingly it does a pretty good job. At no point during the movie are we led to believe that Anora is a character worth looking down on in either pity or disapproval, she storms into the film with so much strength that it’s impossible to do either. She’s presented as a woman who can handle herself, that she does this job and is damn great at it because she’s pretty great at handling people. It’s a performance that makes you instantly love her and want only the best for her, and what’s wild is that she keeps that core strength up for the entire film. She can literally be tied up by a pair of goons and is still the strongest person in the room, it’s kind of mindblowing how incredible she is.

In fact, let’s all just be blunt and call out the reality that the reason this film is getting such praise and so many awards is entirely because Mikey Madison is delivering a career-defining performance. Do you want to discuss a fearless, funny, dramatic, heartbreaking performance? Mikey Madison as Anora is the benchmark for that right now. She has more power in a look than most people do in a full hour of film, you can’t help but be completely enamoured by her as the film keeps going on. You spend so much time just waiting for her to crack, to finally break down after what she’s going through but she doesn’t let it show. Even when she’s scared you can tell she’s got something going on to try and get out of the situation. It’s the kind of performance that makes the film a must-watch.

It’s also helpful that Anora isn’t playing with kid gloves, it’s bluntly about sex workers and it’s going to lean into that. It’s got a real grit to it, there are rough edges and texture that a lot of films try to wash away to be marketable. Anora isn’t afraid to have people overlap their speech, or have awkward moments pop up, it’s not some pristine perfect picture where everything is so well calibrated. It feels more real, these people feel like people you might actually run into at a club somewhere and even characters with two lines of dialogue in one scene feel like they’ve got a history that comes through thanks to the film being willing to be a little rough-edged at times.

Now that’s not to praise all of the rough edges, one of the big issues Anora has is that it can kind of drag in some parts. Some scenes go on for far too long, the big confrontation scene feels very repetitive at times, a sequence where the main cast searches for Vanya can feel overdone at times and there’s a lot of lingering that sometimes works and sometimes feels like it’s padding the runtime. Again, I appreciate this film has the rough edges that make it interesting but do we need a 10-minute scene where the same thing happens about 5 times? It makes the pacing a little off at times, particularly towards the latter half when you can kind of see where things are heading and it’s harder to stay invested (though, again, thank the lord for Mikey Madison who helps push us  through to the end)

Anora is an awards darling for a reason, it’s an interesting take on the “sex worker being pulled out of their comfort zone” story that has a lead performance that’s worthy of your time. While some parts feel a little too loose and some moments where I couldn’t help but cringe just a little, it’s still just such a captivating time that it’s no wonder that it’s gotten so much attention. Hopefully, this is the start of a meteoric rise for Mikey Madison in particular, she deserves all the praise in the world for making this film the special thing it has become.