Keep an Eye on Igor

Anora a film by Sean Baker.  With Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Karren Karagulian, Yura Borisov.  Streaming (by purchase) on Amazon Prime ****

 Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

My feelings about this movie are largely informed by a conversation I had with my wife the morning after we saw it, as we took our long hike up a mountain in Asheville.  Until we had that conversation, I would have said that this movie—though beautifully acted and very well directed—was too long by at least twenty minutes, mind-numbing in its portrayal of a (sickeningly) hedonistic lifestyle, often hilariously funny, and marked by a virtuoso performance by Mikey Madison in the title role.  My wife convinced me that there was more to the movie than I’d seen.  She almost made me want to watch it—at least the second half—again (something I could do, because in order to see the movie, weirdly, we had to purchase it.  It’s ours for life!)

Anora—who prefers the name Ani—works in what is ironically called a Gentleman’s Club somewhere in Manhattan[1].  It’s a place where women strip, or maybe start with almost nothing on, and entertain men by lap dances in the main room and more intimate encounters in private rooms.  I’m not sure what the official policy is for the private rooms, but it seems the reality is, Anything goes.  I’m not sure Ani actually has sex in one of the private rooms, but she makes dates there to go elsewhere and do it.  The atmosphere of the club is dark, sleazy, and—if the film is accurate—frenetic, moving to the beat of techno-music.  In the first scene Ani seems to spend most of the night at work and return to her house in Brooklyn in the wee hours of the morning.

She’s been chosen as the partner for a young Russian named Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) because she knows Russian, which was all her grandmother spoke.  She understands the language well, speaks it haltingly (and apparently with a bad accent), but the two of them easily get along.  He soon asks her to meet at his place.  The mansion he lives in is lavish almost beyond belief.  It’s mammoth, has a stunning view of the ocean, a regular staff to clean the place up, and is in a gated community.  When Ani first goes there, the two of them are alone in this vast place, and their encounter lasts all of about five minutes.  Ivan, to say the least, is ready to rock and roll.

Eventually he suggests that she stay with him for a week.  He offers her $10,000, she bumps him up to 15, and he soon admits he would have gone as high as 30.  The sky seems to be the limit as far as what he can pay.  He says he’s twenty.  She’s 23.

He acts like he’s thirteen.  When not actually partying or having sex, the only thing he does is play video games.  He has plenty of friends, especially because he pays for things, and he likes to go out drinking, dancing, and having sex in out of the way places.  Eventually they relocate to Las Vegas, where a suite is waiting for him that is just about as lavish as the one in Brooklyn.  It is there that this becomes a Cinderella story, when Ivan, on an impulse, proposes marriage.  It’s hard for the viewer to take this moment seriously, since his only occupation seems to be video games.  Ani is not naïve, but sees this as a chance to get out of the underclass she’s been living in.  She takes it.

It’s this early part of the movie that wore me out.  I got tired of the endless scenes of drinking, drugging, dancing, and dorking (I like sex scenes, but this guy has all the finesse of the 13-year-old he seems to be.  Eventually Ani tries to teach him).  Finally the newlyweds come back to their Brooklyn apartment, the men who were supposed to be supervising Ivan show up, the shit hits the fan, and the movie turns comic.

Ivan is the son of a Russian oligarch (whatever in the hell that is); his supervisors include a couple of thugs and a Russian Orthodox priest named Toros (one of the least holy priests ever portrayed).  They immediately inform Ivan’s parents, who get on their private jet and head for the states.  In the meantime, Ivan goes AOL, Ani stays behind to deal with the situation, and these men tell her the marriage needs to be annulled.  If they thought she’d go quietly, they’ve got the wrong girl.  She not only fights, she screams her fool head off.  She knows her rights.  And she intends to be treated as a wife.  Not a whore.

If these men are part of a Russian mafia, they’re The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight.  They not only can’t handle Ani (who is like a wildcat), they have no idea how to find Ivan (something Ani wants too).  Eventually Toros (Karren Karagulian) convinces Annie that they’re in this situation together; they have the common interest of finding Ivan.  And that is what they set out to do, in the Russian community in that part of New York.

What my wife noticed (which I did not, though I saw it when she pointed it out) is that one of these men, named Igor (Yura Borisov)—the muscle of the group—was doing his job, but had deep sympathy for Ani.  That’s true in every scene they appear in, even when he’s tying her up and otherwise restraining her.  He eventually suggests that the Russian family, Ivan and his parents, owe this young woman an apology, an idea they openly scorn.  Later still, he tells her she’s lucky she didn’t become a member of this (rather horrible) family, though she’s not ready to hear that.  He doesn’t see her as a whore (as they do) or a wife (as she sees herself), but as a human being.  And the movie ends with a tender and touching scene that makes the whole thing look different.  It was other than what we thought all along.

Ani’s problem, if she has one, is that she can only relate to men through sex.  She’s great at that, and it’s gotten her through her life so far.  Igor relates to her in another way.  It takes her a while to get that.  She’s only beginning as the movie ends.

I’d still cut the first half rather drastically.  I didn’t find all the hedonism amusing or informing.  Maybe I’m just an old fart.  The second half is another thing altogether.  I can’t quite call it a comedy, and it’s not a tragedy.  A romance?  Maybe so.  But it sneaks up on you.

The same way it snuck up on Ani.

[1] My favorite name for one of these businesses is one I often drive past in West Virginia on my way to Pittsburgh.  Southern Exposure.