Road to the Oscars Review: ‘Anora’ Comes from a Place of Respecting Sex Workers

Every year, in the time between when the Academy Award nominations are announced and the actual Oscars ceremony is held, OFM movie reviewer and associate editor Julie River tries to watch all the movies nominated for Best Picture that year. In the years since the pandemic, this has become easier, as a lot move of the movies are now available on streaming.

Last year was the first year since they expanded the number of Best Picture nominees from five to 10 that River managed to make it through all 10 nominated films, and as she did so, she wrote reviews of them for OFM. This year, she aims to do it again, watching all 10 nominated films and writing about them for this site. She already saw and reviewed Emilia Pérez and I’m Still Here as part of her coverage of this year’s 47th Annual Denver Film Festival. That leaves her with eight films to watch and review. Can she make it through all 10 films again? Find out on OFM’s Road to the Oscars!

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The simple fact that a movie like Sean Baker’s Anora can be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar—and the fact that it has a significant chance at winning, albeit due to the increased controversy over two other movies—completely restores my faith in the Academy Awards and reminds me why I follow the Oscar race at all. This is a brilliant comedy with a heart of gold that gives us one of the strongest female protagonists of the entire year. I often complain about the Academy overlooking good, smart comedies and ignoring the fact that writing a good comedy is a really difficult craft that takes some serious talent. So, I’m happy to see Anora in the best picture running, because this film is a masterclass in how to make a smartly comedic script.

In Anora, we meet Anora “Ani” Mikheeva (Mikey Madison), a stripper at a club called Headquarters, who sometimes also works as a full-service sex worker and sees clients for sex outside of the club. One night, a rich young son of a Russian oligarch named Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn) shows up at Headquarters, and Ani’s boss, knowing that she can speak Russian, asks her to meet with Vanya. Ani is of Russian descent and learned the language to communicate with her grandmother, but struggles to pronounce words correctly and is, at first, reluctant to speak Russian with a native speaker. But Vanya starts to become enamored with her, wanting to meet with her outside the club. Then he pays for her to be his girlfriend for a week, culminating in a weekend in Vegas. On a whim, Vanya proposes to Ani and she says yes and the two quickly get married in a Vegas chapel.

Returning home, Ani says goodbye to her life in the club, burning bridges with the girls she doesn’t get along with on her way out. But when it comes to the attention of Toros (Karren Karagulian), the handler that Vanya’s father pays to look after the boy, that Vanya has gotten married, he sends his two thugs Igor (Yura Borisov) and Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan) to apprehend Vanya and Ani so the two can be forced into getting an annulment. But when Vanya runs off, Igor and Garnik discover Ani to be a bit more than they can handle. Now Ani is ready to do what she needs to do to protect her newfound lifestyle and her marriage as the full force of Vanya’s family and their influence come down on her. Still, as one of the thugs, Igor, starts to sympathize with his captive, is it possible that Ani has finally found a genuine ally?

Ani is a survivor, that’s something that’s made apparent by her actions from the beginning of the film to the end. From the beginning, as we see the persona she puts on with her clients compared to who she is in real life, we see a woman who is masterful at playing off other people’s desire for her to get what she wants. And yet, while that’s often portrayed in a sinister way, Ani is, instead, made out to be endearing. The movie comes at her from an angle where, rather than condemn her in any sexist or slut-shaming way for being deceptive, it comes off feeling like the movie wants you to respect her for doing what she has to do to survive. That’s such a simple thing, but it’s a radical shift in perspective of how movies and media in general look at sex workers.

But more than that, Ani’s survivor instinct motivates the plot and, after already growing to love her for that same survivor instinct, you just have to root for her. Was her marriage to an obviously irresponsible rich kid who she had known for a week perhaps a rash decision? Sure, but you never really get into a place of blaming her. Rather, you end up rooting for her and it becomes hard to get to the inevitable point of realizing that her marriage is doomed. I don’t put a spoiler warning on that because it is absolutely obvious from the get-go that Ani and Vanya won’t last as a couple, but the movie is rather masterful in the way it makes you want to root against something you know has to be coming.

That being said, I do want to put a spoiler warning somewhere around here because I want to get into the very last scene of the movie. As Ani, realizing that Igor has started to care for her and she climbs on top of him to have sex, then instead cries, it’s such a bizarre scene but it’s, in Ani’s dysfunctional way, the healthiest decision she makes in the entire movie. By this point, she’s truly won over the audience to her side and we want to see her finally make good decisions, and maybe jumping into sex with the first guy to show some actual respect for her is a bit rash, but Igor is clearly a better person for her than Vanya and you have to at least applaud her for being rash with the right person. Yura Borisov does an excellent job making Igor out to be both someone you can buy as a big, tough guy that would be a hired thug for some shady characters, but also as the most emotionally vulnerable and genuine character in the whole farce.

I’m actually not very familiar with Anora’s director, Sean Baker, but apparently he’s known for focusing on marginalized populations with a particular interest in immigrants and sex workers. Baker clearly has a lot of respect for sex workers and manages to position his film in such a way as to make the viewer respect sex workers as well. In a world of male fantasies, Anora takes the perspective of the woman at the center of the male fantasy and treats her as a fully-formed human being instead of the sex object that everyone around her wants to treat her as.

Anora is currently the Vegas odds* favorite for Best Picture, which is shocking, but as referenced before, it’s largely due to the implosion of two other film’s Oscar campaigns. For those who haven’t kept up with it, Emilia Pérez was well on pace to be a likely Best Picture winner after its performance at the Golden Globes, even as some of the LGBTQ+ community were reacting negatively to it (which I disagreed with). But then, some people turned up some old tweets from the film’s star Karla Sofia Gascon that made problematic statements about George Floyd and Islam and some other topics, mostly around race. While I stand by my love of that film, I’m a little less enthusiastic about supporting Gascon, especially after her less-than-stellar apology and the way she’s been handling the controversy.

Meanwhile, The Brutalist, which was sort of the next film poised to win, has been suffering due to the controversy about the use of AI to supplement the actors’ pronunciations in Hungarian. The Brutalist winning Best Picture isn’t as impossible at this point as Emilia Pérez winning Best Picture is, but the fact that there’s controversy around the two of them has left Anora in a surprising place to overtake them both for Best Picture. That would be a pretty big upset, but I’d be really happy to see a movie like this win over the overrated The Brutalist.

For similar reasons, Sean Baker has overtaken Brady Corbet, director of The Brutalist, in the odds for Best Director. That could go either way, but I’d like to see Baker take it home because I think he made the better movie. Mikey Madison is second favorite in the Best Actress race behind Demi Moore for The Substance. I haven’t seen The Substance yet, but I know that Demi Moore looks really unbeatable this year, so I don’t think Mikey Madison wins this year. And then Yura Borisov is a very distant choice to win Best Supporting Actor and definitely won’t win, but he certainly deserves the nod.

Regardless, Anora even getting this close to the Best Picture Oscar makes the Oscars exciting for me this year because it gives me something to root for. Anora is a hilarious comedy that takes a sympathetic view of a marginalized female character and really creates something empowering for women. In a strange way, Anora is this year’s Barbie Movie, as it’s this year’s great comedy with the strong female character. I’m excited for every award this movie is going to win.

*I’m going to be referring to the Vegas odds on the Oscars because I think they’re a handy guide to gauge the likelihood of a film winning a particular award, but I do want to emphasize that betting on the Oscars is not legal in the state of Colorado, and this is just something I bring up for fun in my predictions. We are not endorsing anyone gambling on the Oscars in an area where it isn’t legal.

Anora is available for rent or purchase on a number of websites. Find the best place to purchase it here.

All photos courtesy of Neon Rated