«Anora» - Movie Review by Kinoafisha

The 77th Cannes Film Festival has completed its work and announced the winners, the main prize - the Palme d'Or - was awarded to the American film "Anora" directed by Sean Baker. The film tells the story of a striptease club employee with an Uzbek name who falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch. It's a pretty typical description for a laureate of one of the world's leading film festivals. Let's figure out why this particular film evoked such a deep response from the Cannes jury.

Muted neon lights, loud pop dance music, enclosed rooms for such a relatively spacious strip club - Twenty-three-year-old Anora waltzes among the visitors with a playful smile on her face. She needs to find a client for today's shift and go dancing in a private room. Young, old, married, divorced, poor, rich — she doesn't care who she serves, because she does it for money. If a customer runs out of cash, she is happy to escort him to the nearest ATM. That's how caring she is.

Of course, her night shifts don't always go smoothly. Sometimes colleagues get on her nerves, running into conflict. You see, Anora wasn't supposed to dance for her client while she wasn't at the club. But there's nothing personal about it, just business. Anora tries to hide her heart and not get too attached to it. However, she does not hide her emotions when someone incorrectly selects her playlist for private dances. In such cases, she does not hesitate to express her displeasure to the manager. After all, you can't joke with Anora if you make her angry.

One evening she was asked to serve a guy named Vanya because she is the only one who knows Russian. Anora is an Uzbek name, and her grandmother managed to teach her this language. She thinks she is not good at speaking it, so she asks Vanya to speak Russian, and she answers in English. Vanya doesn't care what language they speak. He is too fascinated by the beautiful girl standing in front of him to pay attention to the words. What started as a good opportunity to make money turns into a passionate, carefree love story.

This is not "Pretty Woman" with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, although the plot resembles the famous movie about a rich man and a prostitute. Garry Marshall's film is too patriarchal and outdated in a modern context. Relationships with sex workers are now more normalized, although it still seems strange to those over 40.

Vanya and Anora do not notice the difference in their statuses. They just live life to the fullest: they have sex, have parties, spend money in Las Vegas, walk around Brighton Beach, and sometimes Anora just cuddles with Vanya while he plays video games. It sounds like a normal buzzer relationship, just for a few thousand dollars. In Las Vegas, they impulsively decide to get married so that Vanya can get a green card and stay in the United States before his oligarch father can bring him back to work in the family business. Frivolous? Stupid? Unrealistic? It's just good to be young, naive and in love.

Their romantic adventure ends abruptly when Ivan's parents find out about his marriage to a sex worker. It's a shame for the family, and they quickly file for divorce. Ivan's father immediately invites his local Armenian colleagues, Toros and Garnik, and the scene turns into a comedy farce in three languages. Most of the film is in Russian with intersperses of English and Armenian. Despite their linguistic abilities, the characters do not understand each other.

That's the main message of Sean Baker: people stopped listening to each other. In today's world, where we have to believe in love between two young people, there is no love, sincerity, care or basic humanity. Perhaps Vanya really fell in love with a sex worker, and she gave him her heart without any conditions. Perhaps she really doesn't need money and has genuinely fallen in love with this carefree, cheerful and kind guy. Only Anora understands this, but not the people around her.

Sean Baker has created a social drama that vividly shows the different strata of society. The rich will continue to exploit the poor to their advantage, sex workers will face humiliation even from their colleagues, money rules the world, and immigrants will continue to get questionable jobs. "Anora" is a film about all the pressing problems in the world, which jumps from one genre to another, creating a real circus on the screen. You can laugh, feel tender, get annoyed, angry and cry with Anora. Experience her emotions and experiences throughout the film. Her story is so fascinating that it's impossible not to think about the movie for hours after it. A truly complex social fairy tale with a heartbreaking ending. Alas, that's life.