I hated Anora.

I feel like I am being gaslit by film Twitter.

Are we all going fucking crazy or am I missing something? The neo-realist take on the Cinderella story follows Ani ( Mikey Maddison) , a young woman from Brooklyn working in a strip club. The premise of a bratty sex worker meeting a spoiled son of a Russian oligarch is absurd and potentially hilarious. As she is exposed to a whole other world of wealth and excess they get married in Vegas and she thinks she has struck gold. Once the news meets Russia his parents set out to New York to have the marriage annulled. Resulting in a quest of violence under the guise of humour.

While I absolutely love The Florida Project ( Baker, 2017) I have always been a little suss on Sean Baker. Making films about marginalised people with what I would argue is a crippling porn addition rubs me the wrong way. Something about him reminds me of Sam Levinson or Mark Laita from Soft White Under Belly ( you know those black and white interviews with someone sitting on a stool on Youtube.) I fear he falls into the category of artistic white man whose genius is praised whilst he depicts women as destructive and taken advantage of yet still independent. Baker is known for not paying crew. While that could be understood earlier in his career, as an auteur and award season darling making films about poor people this does leave a bad taste. He was praised for consulting sex workers in the writing and production of Anora yet did not pay them for their time and insight. The recent discourse around the lack of an intimacy coordinator on the set of Anora is a little boring to me. If Mikey Maddison felt comfortable and safe then she is well within her right to say she didn't want one. However, this general idea that I feel Baker is pushing that real cinema and pure directors don’t think intimacy coordinators are necessary feels very artistic man- "Oh my art is more important than comfortability on set.’ As we have recently seen with Blake Lively’s lawsuit against Justin Baldoni it is often the woke men who present themselves as informed on women’s issues who can be the most vile and abusive men.

The Laura Mulvey male gaze conversation is almost reductive once we accept the camera lens as a lens to the world. Is it possible for a male director to make a film about strippers without the male gaze? Probably not. Yet linger shots of butts and boobs felt quite unnecessary to me. Now anyone who knows me knows I am no prude. As a Sasha Grey super fan and lover of sexploitation cinema I am not easy to shock and offend. What is off to me with Anora is that kidnapping and threats of rape are played of as slap-stick. I felt uncomfortable in the cinema as men around me cackled at rape jokes and the tying up and restraining of a woman. The positioning of the lead Ani being independent, strong-willed and a match to these violent men further positioned her as the butt of the joke rather than a victor. Baker has been praised for his ‘empathetic yet hilarious film making’ but I do see it in this film. ‘Nothing about us without us’ has become the rallying cry of sex workers demand to be included in discussions, films and documentaries made about them. But just like film accounts only posting sexy screen caps from Sue in The Substance, most posts I have seen about Anora feature Ani twerking. There are some fascinating optics at play with the Oscar race seeming to be between Maddison and Demi Moore considering the plot of the substance. Two black haired beauties transcribing youth in radically different ways is almost too on the nose.

I’ve got to be honest here; it is crazy to me that Mikey Maddison is the most awarded actress of the 2024 award season. I don’t know if I am particularly impressed by 2 hours of shrieking in a fake New York accent. Maddison does bring some nuance and complexity to her performance in a role that if played by a lesser actor could be grating and repetitive. Criminal underwriting lends her to shine in moments where the camera is on her yet she doesn’t think anyone else in the scene is watching her. Now the casting of Ivy Woolfe…. Is the Red Scare/ BRAT effect that women need to be racist on Twitter in order to get cast on films? Maybe a slight exposure to Baker's right-wing leanings we have seen from his Twitter.

Now if this movie was made with a black female lead it would not be awarded to this extent if at all. It would have been seen as a ‘black movie’ and met with criticism of it being ‘ghetto’ from the traditionally conservative award season voters. I remember the internet laughing at Jennifer Lopez when she was campaigning for an Oscar for Hustlers. I am no Jlo Stan but I thought her performance in that film was quite incredible. Also the film Zola which came out in 2020 was a brilliant portrayal of sex and work and stripping but didn’t garner any attention, could it be potentially because of its black female lead? The cultural love affair with Pretty Woman has proved that conservative audiences can be okay with a sex worker as a female lead as long as she is white and pretty and lacking drive and agency. Where is Ani’s interiority? Now I am not arguing that all sex workers are working towards a larger goal but the character's desire to get out of the lifestyle is apparent. She is elated to go back to her workplace and show off her ring, brag about her mansion and leave the lifestyle behind. She is using Vanya as much as he is using her. The only interaction we get is with her roommate, where she asks if Ani got milk and she replies ‘do you see any fucking milk?’ Showing Ani as a generally angry and unfeeling character. I legitimately don't know if hearing 'faggot ass bitch' repeatedly is Palme d'Or worthy.

The film does a good job of showing how sex work alters your brain. The opening montage of smile, dance, repeat shows the repetitive nature of hustling for men to pay for you to service their desires. That intimacy with men must always involve sex and all interactions with men are business transactions. The melancholic reality that clients will profess love and promise the world but only in the confines of brothels, hotel rooms and private spaces. It was accurate in depicting a lot of clients as man children who cannot be trusted once in the public sphere. Maybe Ivan did have some love for Ani but he was never gonna give it up if it meant losing his wealth, class and protection from his nuclear family. It is understandable and realistic that she hoped and strived to catch her ‘way out’ and hope for stability. The way it disintegrates and she is back where she started is tragic yet shown as funny. The small moments of displays of whoreachy and in-fighting are very real feeling. What has been confusing to me is the praise and shipping of Igor. Yes they are bonded through their socio-economic positions as both ‘working for the man’ and the familiarity in lighting cigarettes in his mouth and giving her one. He still tied her up, beat her and restrained her!

As she vapes in the club and eats her dinner out of a Tupperware container she tells her boss only when he ‘gives her a pension, health benefits and insurance can decide when and how she works and not works!’ On the surface the historic workers rights for sex workers introduced in Belgium seem like a great step in the right direction. Celebrated by both Baker and Maddison in the promotion of Anora, sex workers will now be entitled to ‘offical employment contracts, health insurance, pensions, maternity leave and sick days.’ These benefits will not be available to everyone, with the law excluding students, part-timers and women without working visas. While it can be a net negative in terms of job security, the nature of being a private contractor in sex work can also be a good thing; you have the right to refuse clients and the capacity to refuse sevices. Now with these new laws you are not protected if you refuse services 10 times within 6 months which as a full-time full- service sex worker is not much at all. The establishment you work at can tell the government that you are refusing work and you can lose all benefits. Sounds a bit like government sanctioned rape to me. It is not a win for sex workers when Brothel owners have more rights than the sex workers who work in them.

In Cinderella, the princess escapes the mundanity of work and labour through love and marriage. In neo-liberal 2024 this is even less possible. Filmmakers are often drawn to the wealth, glamour and bright lights of sex work and seem ignore that a lot of strip clubs are quiet and girls spend hours watching day time TV and chain smoking. Sex work aside, the film proves a cautionary tale of the disposability of service workers by the upper classes. In the final scene Ani is presented with someone who shows he cares for her after hours of rejection and abuse. He gives her back the engagement ring he stole and she switches back to work mode. She incites sex with him. There is a mental recognition of their class and position in society. She previously said to Igor that he ‘would have raped her’ if they were left alone together. He says he wouldn't and she can’t seem to comprehend a man viewing her as a person rather than an object. She breaks down crying and he holds her, halting the sexual encounter and the credits roll. I Hear men getting up from their recliner chairs and saying ‘anyone else hard right now?’