Walking into Anora at one of London’s cinemas, I was expecting a tale of a dancer escaping her life with the son of a Russian oligarch. The trailer was enough for me to imagine what the movie looked like—a realist rom-com with a lot of drama to make the story interesting. What I did not expect was walking out of the theater in deafening silence, Igor’s car engine sound looping in my head, and Ani’s tears tearing my heart apart.

Anora follows the life of Ani (Mikey Madison), a 23-year-old dancer hustling to get by, living paycheck to paycheck as she manages her lack of stability while sharing a small house with her sister. With a mother in Florida and an absent father, Ani has long been an adult, living life on her own terms even though she remains trapped under a perpetual transactional gaze and an uncertain future. Vanya (Mark Eidelstein) is a 21-year-old hyper-juvenile and immature son of a Russian oligarch, constantly pursuing the illusion of the “American Dream”. When he meets Ani, he sees her as his American fantasy and a ticket to stay in America. Their inauthentic “rom-com” begins when Vanya starts a transactional relationship with Ani, which takes them to Las Vegas within a few days, where he spontaneously proposes and they get married. While Vanya secures his place in the U.S., Ani begins to believe she has finally found a sense of belonging, stability, and maybe even love.

However, the fairy tale crumbles the moment Ani steps into her new life. Vanya’s parents call from Russia demanding an annulment after hearing the news that their son married an escort. They task Toros (Karren Karagulian)—a self-serving, local priest who keeps their troublemaker son in line—to handle the situation. He brings along two men, Igor (Yura Borisov) and Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan), who at first look like stereotypical Eastern European enforcers. At this moment, Vanya abandons Ani without hesitation to save himself, leaving her to deal with the three men alone; their presence is framed as threatening, not because of their intent, but through Ani’s fear. After being love-bombed and abandoned by an impulsive child, Ani’s way is being blocked by these three men determined to drag her away from the fragile sense of stability she was beginning to grasp. To her, they are a real threat, and her reaction—throwing objects, screaming, fighting back—makes that clear. Though their lack of ill intent is later played for comedy, we experience them as Ani does: a genuine danger.

The rest of the film unfolds as a stress-inducing rollercoaster chase through freezing New York City, following Ani, Toros, Garnik, and Igor as they track Vanya. The scene that encapsulates the entire film comes when Vanya—whose childish instincts lead him straight back to HQ, the dance club where Ani used to work—gets dragged out by Toros. As Ani pleads with him to listen, he remains indifferent, more focused on grabbing another drink and eyeing other dancers than acknowledging the chaos he has left behind.

Anora, at its core, is a film about the gender and class struggle of a marginalized woman. Ani’s marginalization as a female sex worker closely intersects with her class struggle. Her pursuit was one of a better life, seeking dignity and emotional security in a world that refuses to respect her profession. The film comments on this by showing the contrast in life experiences between genders within the same social class. Unlike male characters such as Igor and Garnik who share Ani’s lower-class status but navigate their marginality with relative freedom, Ani’s struggle is shaped by both her gender and her role as a sex worker; she faces an added layer of patriarchal dominance that makes her fight for agency more complex.

Refusing to be dragged down from the top of her new position, Ani kept making excuses for Vanya to avoid divorce. Ultimately, Ani loses her fight against the higher class the moment Vanya’s mother commands her to board the plane flying to the site of the pair’s annulment and threatens to take everything from her, including her family.

The ending scene brings together the themes of gender and class struggle through Ani’s tears. Her struggle to accept genuine care from Igor not only reveals sex as her only currency but also how her emotional boundaries are shaped by male control. When Igor returns the diamond ring that was taken from Ani, she instinctively thanks him the way she has been conditioned to—through transactionality. It is her currency. But when Igor initiates an unexpected kiss—a call for connection—it goes beyond what she is used to, unlocking something deeper.

Igor’s acts of kindness throughout the film do not excuse his earlier actions of gagging and tying her up. Even when he ensured she was okay, demanded Vanya apologize, and stole back her ring, Ani had no reason to trust him. While his actions were not driven by love but by basic human respect and decency, Ani's defensive response was justified as someone who had spent her life fighting to protect herself.

After the kiss, the weight of all the loss, trauma, and unfamiliarity of genuine intimacy came crashing down. As her emotional armor drops, Ani lashes out, pushing not only Igor away but also something that she cannot quite grasp anymore.

The screen cuts to black. The theater lights turn on. No joyful music, no grand resolution; the audience is sitting in silence with the lingering sound of Igor’s car engine. As Ani’s tears continue to cut deep into the viewers’ hearts, we realize she is finally feeling safe, maybe for the first time in a long time. Whether she and Igor stay together is beside the point. In that moment, what matters is her realization that she is the only one who can save herself.

One of the film’s strengths is Ani’s character. Unlike many films about sex work, Ani breaks from the stereotype of “the prostitute with a heart of gold”, refusing to let men label her as that. Her character arc is marked by gradually reclaiming that word and using it to taunt Vanya’s mother; she begins to own labels that were once meant to hurt her.

The film also doesn’t portray her as truly miserable. In a system that denies her basic respect, she shares moments of joy with her friends. She demands her rights—and desire for stability and dignity—by asking for a week off, a 401k, and health insurance from her boss—who is simply a boss instead of a thug or pimp. She refuses to be shamed for her profession. Her workplace is treated as a legitimate profession instead of a criminal underworld. This honest and nuanced portrayal of the community surrounding Ani helps clear the stigma attached to sex work.

Her interactions with Igor further explore her emotional depth and complex character. Ani’s cold and angry responses to Igor’s acts of kindness—or apologies—come from the trauma she has endured. However, her response to someone who refused to give her drugs and who has a moral compass to be a decent guy—which in itself breaks the stereotype of the heartless enforcer—was to lash out and call him a homophobic slur.

A major criticism of director Sean Baker’s film centers on his framing of Ani’s story through a male gaze. While some argue that the camera merely depicts the reality of strip clubs, which primarily cater to a male audience, Baker himself doesn’t entirely escape the influence of the male gaze. For a male director like Baker, the gaze is not merely a technical aspect about who holds the camera, it is deeply rooted in the historical positioning of men as the default subject. This gaze is ingrained in Baker's subjectivity, shaping how he looks and is looked at, as well as his understanding of desire, power, and representation. Even when a male director attempts to recreate the "female gaze", he does so within the logic of his social position. For this reason, Baker, like any other male director, cannot escape the male gaze.

However, the bigger question is not whether he can escape it but if he can acknowledge and critically engage with it. In trying to empower Ani and critique male authority, Baker is involuntarily echoing the notion he attempts to deconstruct. Repeated use of low-angle shots for male characters—except for Vanya’s mom—serves to consecrate male authority. Baker often portrays Ani with high-angle shots, emphasizing and conveying an unwanted vulnerability. This subtle power play within the gaze’s geometry might suggest that Baker is not fully self-aware of the male gaze.

Another issue with the film is the comic cloaking of some scenes that showed Ani in danger. In the scene where Vanya abandons Ani, she fights to protect herself from the three men who broke into her house. Her safe space is invaded by strangers; Ani throws every object near her, kicks Garnik in the nose, and bites Igor in the neck. Her screaming “Rape” was met with an even louder scream from Igor as he turned red, begging her to stop screaming. The absurdity presented never failed to bring at least a chuckle from many audience members. Baker may be intentionally cloaking Ani’s trauma in humor, but this creates a form of dissonance that makes us laugh at what should be taken extremely seriously.

In his pursuit to remove the stigma surrounding sex work, Baker often creates fairytales for his characters, actively stepping aside from showing the harsh reality of the industry, especially the brutal realities faced by immigrant women in the industry. While this approach makes his work more accessible and opens the door for discussions that could eventually lead to themes of exploitation, it avoids confronting these issues head-on.

Overall, Sean Baker does not ask us to pity Ani or judge her. His magic allows his characters to exist and be human; he does not depict them as sinners or saints, but only asks us, the audience, to see them with grace and understanding. By doing so, Anora does not just expose the limits of a Cinderella fantasy, it lays bare the deeper illusion of the American Dream itself.