Sometimes, Anora comes across as a film designed to appeal to the extreme online audience, much in the same way as Charli XCX Brator Greta Gerwig’s Barbieor the Safdies’ Uncut gemstones they all did. It contains all of social media’s favorite thematic elements: sex work, wealth and excess, class commentary, good-looking people, “bisexual enlightenment,” Tumblr-baiting images. It’s hard not to be a little cynical when a movie plays the hits so easily and gleefully, though perhaps that’s the point: the late-millennial/Gen Z cheese to lure that audience in and capture them in its fable about the limits of transactional fantasies.

As the latest film from Sean Baker, director of films like The Florida Project, Mandarin, And Red rocket, Anora can be seen as the culmination of his career-long artistic thesis on sex work, class struggle and the dangers of late capitalism. Mikey Madison stars as the titular Anora, a 21st century Cinderella living in Brooklyn as a struggling sex worker. One day, Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eidelstein), a 23-year-old replacement for Timothée Chalamet, who might as well still be 15, walks into her strip club. Vanya, the son of a Russian oligarch, has his dirty encounter with Anora, as she is the only stripper there who speaks Russian. He soon takes a liking to Anora and begins requesting her time away from the club. Thus begins their working relationship, with Vanya eventually paying her to have sex and play video games with him at his mansion, to hang out with him exclusively, and in the film’s biggest set piece, to be his weekend girlfriend as he and his take friends. an impromptu trip to Las Vegas, complete with private jets, luxury suite pools, drugs and alcohol on standby, and expensive shopping sprees.

The whirlwind ‘romance’ is shot like a Hype Williams video, full of breathtaking cinematography and a roving eye to catch all the thrills that unlimited money can bring. So much so that at times it feels like the audience is meant to be even more ensnared than Anora. She never seems to forget that she’s on time, at least until Vanya makes the clearly ill-conceived choice to propose to Anora, ostensibly so he can stay in the United States and not have to return to Russia. But he convinces her that he means it and she is seduced, not only by his apparent seriousness, but probably also by the last 48 hours they have spent. The Wolf of Wall Street.

It is here that the film becomes much brighter. Not just because the second half resembles the crash after an intense drug high, in which Vanya’s counselors/babysitters find out about the marriage and arrive in New York to force an annulment. Not just because the film sometimes gets too hung up on its similarities with other films Stupid-drunk love And Uncut gemstones. The most flimsy part is that in order for this transactional fantasy to fully carry the weight necessary for the second half of the chicanes, you have to believe on some level that these two people have a real connection, even if it’s only a deep one concept. of their role and loyalty to each other. Madison plays Anora with conviction, charisma, and wisdom, but to such an extent that you can’t quite believe she’ll be sucked in by a man-child like Vanya, who acts like someone who’s never had to grow up. He is irritable, volatile, drunk and constantly high, easily distracted and unwilling to engage in any confrontation. The only real argument for why Anora would be so committed to the marriage plot is because it is her only chance to get out of poverty.

In the second half of the film, when Vanya’s handlers arrive and he flees, leaving Anora essentially their prisoner as they spend the rest of the film trying to find him and annul the marriage, Anora clings to the belief that she can make his family like her. or at least that Vanya will remain loyal to their union. But there is literally nothing that can convince you that this could happen, other than blind hope. And “blindly hopeful” seems like the opposite of how Madison plays the character. The resulting dissonance diminishes what should be devastating and undermines what should be exciting.

Anyway, Anora it’s a lot of fun. Even in the second half of the comedown, the darkness of the comedy becomes as exciting as all its richness thrills. The actors – many of whom are discoveries that Baker excels at – are truly captivating presences on screen. Especially the character Igor (Yuriy Borisov) and his dynamic with Anora as they search through the city in search of Vanya.

In the end, if anyone here seems completely enraptured by Vanya’s decadent lifestyle to the point of pointlessness, it’s the film itself, and that’s what holds him back. Baker could argue that the camera’s obvious pleasure in luxuriating in wealth porn is necessary to deliver the gut feelings of the second half, an ultimate explanation of what it really means to live in such a transactional society. Maybe that’s true, but it feels like Anora got lost in his own fantasy without ever fully recovering.