Anora and the changing depiction of sex work in Hollywood
Andrea Werhun didn't have to wait long to see her influence play out onscreen.
Because as the Toronto-based artist and former sex worker watched just the opening scenes of Anora, she already saw something so familiar, and yet groundbreaking. As the Oscar-frontrunner for best picture introduced its main character — Anora, an exotic dancer and sex-worker about to be taken on an equal parts exciting and terrible trip by a client from hell — we first get a quieter moment.
Sitting in the breakroom of the stripclub where she works, the film shows Anora casually, carefully, eating packed lunch from a plastic container. It's a seemingly everyday activity, one that Werhun specifically suggested to director Sean Baker when he hired her as a consultant, advising on how to ground the film in reality.
It's also a moment that one might more expect to see from a different sort of character, like an office worker — and perhaps not from someone in Anora's line of work.
But Werhun knew different.
"When I saw that on the big screen, I was like, 'Yes, yes, because that's real,'" she said. "And that's not something that as an outsider, as someone who's never spent any time in a strip club locker room, you're ever going to notice, think about or consider."
However small that action seemed on the surface, to Werhun and others with experience working in or studying sex work, it represented much more. Because, Werhun said, for as long as they've appeared in film, sex work and the sex workers have largely been depicted as either wrongdoers needing to be vilified, or victims needing to be saved.
And that kind of perception, she says, has real life repercussions.
"We're victims were villains, we're dead, we've got hearts of gold," she said. "These are such shallow depictions that flatten our humanity and remove nuance and complexity from who we are as human beings, as people."
Heartbreak, reform or tragedy
The usage of sex workers in media is no new thing in general: Lauren Kirshner, an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and author of Sex Work in Popular Culture, pointed to it as the most common job portrayed by best actress winners at the Oscars. Numerous performers have received the award for their work in such defining Hollywood classics as BUtterfield 8, I Want To Live! and The Sin of Madelon, ahead of the next most common professions of singer and teacher. The tradition even goes as far back as the very first winner, Janet Gaynor, who took home the trophy in 1929 for her work in three films. In two of those, Street Angel and 7th Heaven, she played a sex worker.
The majority of those roles though, she said, also featured shared storylines that ended with "love and implied marriage, heartbreak and reform … or tragedy, murder, suicide, or accident." Otherwise, they are often supporting characters used to tempt or simply define the actual protagonist — such as in the long-running series House M.D., which saw the rule-breaking doctor visit sex workers throughout its run to outline his character.
Anora, Kirshner said, is part of the change seen in the past few years, alongside other films like Oscar-winner Poor Things and the Canadian film Paying For It, a film in which Werhun stars. Anora — which follows its star as she first is offered the chance to be saved from her circumstances before plunging back into the realities of her world — never uses her as a prop, and never wavers from her point of view.
This image released by Neon shows Mark Eydelshteyn, left, and Mikey Madison in a scene from Anora. It is part of a series of films changing how sex work and sex workers are depicted. (Neon/The Associated Press)
"The sex worker character is becoming that dynamic character. So we're seeing it more and more. She's centre stage, she is the main character," Kirshner said. "And I think the sex worker finally being the main character and not an accessory and not a pretense to show something sexy or dangerous, that is a sign of how far pop culture has come."
The beginnings of that shift, she said, can perhaps most famously be seen in Pretty Woman, the Julia Roberts-led film about a sex worker eventually swept off her feet by a rich lawyer.
Kirshner said that film and others like it, like its spiritual predecessor Klute starring Jane Fonda, were actually in many ways watershed moments: films that depicted sex workers as extremely likable, dynamic and with an inner life and backstory.
Emily Lê and Daniel Beirne star as romantically challenged couple Sonny and Chester in Sook-Yin Lee’s autobiographical film Paying for It — which follows their relationship to sex work and sex workers. (Courtesy St. John's International Women's Film Festival)
But those films also perpetuated the idea that a happy ending is escaping from a lifestyle forced on them. That, Kirshner says, makes it seem like those characters — and real people like them — have little or no agency.
"There's still a lot of moral judgment attached to the decisions women make. There's a lot of assumptions that no sex worker could truly choose sex work," Kirshner said.
"I mean, all workers are choosing their work within constraints, and sex workers are no different. The only difference is their work is criminalized."
Fraught realities
And it is films like Anora, she said, that make the important distinction of what sex workers may actually want to escape from. In that movie, Anora wants to be lifted out of the workforce that all workers struggle to survive in, instead of being lifted out of an inherently shameful profession.
That depiction is particularly important for the wider perception of sex workers in real life, said Chandra Ewing, the executive director of Maggie's Toronto Sex Workers Action Project. Though the act of selling sexual services is not illegal in Canada, purchasing sexual services is. While this distinction was meant to protect sex workers while still decreasing prostitution, Ewing said it creates a grey area.
Because sex work has some protections as a legitimate business, alongside legislation making it more clandestine, she said sex workers are often in a constant state of fear of being "outed." That could put them at risk of having their profession "weaponized against them" due to preconceptions, and lead to them potentially losing custody of their children, their housing, or status as residents and be removed from the country.
"So it's not even really like an implicit choice that sex workers are making. This is a very real reality that they do not have rights and agency and autonomy over their own lives," she said. "Because of that, sex workers do unfortunately have to exist in the margins."
Cinema's changing depiction of sex workers as more fully-fleshed characters is important, she said, as it humanizes them and can work to undo the idea that they should be stigmatized. But, she said, that has to be done hand in hand with a realistic depiction of the fraught realities sex workers face.
In Werhun's opinion, that can only be done by getting those with direct experience in the industry to tell their own stories — or at least influence the way they are told.
"Because otherwise it's civilians — that's what we call people who don't do sex work — telling stories for us," she said. "And that's just never going to be good enough."
Christian Holub
Sat, October 26, 2024
"We’re dealing with some complex relationships, especially at the end," director Sean Baker tells "Entertainment Weekly."
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Anora.
Before Anora, director Sean Baker would usually cast a minimal amount of professional actors in his movies. In The Florida Project (2017), for instance, he cast Willem Dafoe alongside newcomers like young Brooklynn Prince. In Red Rocket (2021), he surrounded Simon Rex with first-time actors, many of whom Baker asked to audition after running into them on the street near the filming locations.
But Mikey Madison is far from the only experienced actor in Anora, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and is now shaping up as a possible Best Picture contender at the Oscars. Part of the reason for the different casting is that the COVID-19 safety protocols that were in place during the production of Red Rocket (which made it hard to transport a large cast across state lines) are no longer as restrictive. But the casting choices are also a product of the story that Anora is telling, about a Brooklyn sex worker who falls into a whirlwind romance with the son of a Russian oligarch.
“This is my first film in which almost all the leads and the supporting actors are all seasoned, trained actors,” Baker tells Entertainment Weekly. “There was budget, and there was time, which are always the biggest factors. Plus, a significant percentage of our dialogue is in Russian and Armenian, and I don’t know those languages. So that was another reason why I really had to have seasoned actors on board.”
Neon/Courtesy EverettYura Borisov, Mark Eidelshtein, Karren Karagulian, and Mikey Madison in 'Anora'
Baker continues, “In the past, when I've worked with first-timers that I grab off the street, that's an amazing experience, but it wouldn't really work for this film. This film was, as you can probably tell, tightly scripted from beginning to end.”
But even within that tight script, these seasoned actors could make suggestions that impressed Baker. For instance, Yura Borisov (who plays Igor, one of the Russian henchmen employed by the oligarch to fix this marriage situation) came up with an idea during the film’s epic fight scene that the director loved.
Related: Anora star Mikey Madison and director Sean Baker, Best Picture predictions, and more in EW's Awardist digital magazine
“All great actors will bring something to the table that you never expected ever,” Baker says. “When Yura is doing that screaming in her face, ‘Stop screaming!’, he understood my sensibility enough where he pitched that to me. He was like, ‘I want to just scream to the point that it takes to the next level, and I'm screaming louder than she's screaming.’ I'm like, ‘You're so right. That would really help in this moment and take it to a very unexpected place.’ These wonderful actors would bring this stuff to the table, pitch it to me, and then we could figure out how to work it in.”
Baker wasn’t the only one who was impressed by Borisov. As the film goes on and Ani’s relationship with Vanya (Mark Eidelstein) starts to sour, she ends up forging an unexpected connection with Igor. The characters’ chemistry developed in parallel with the actors’ working relationship.
“Yura is an incredible, really serious, professionally trained actor in the Russian Stanislavsky school,” Madison says. “Working with him was really different, he’s so soulful and sensitive. He was constantly surprising me with the way that he was approaching his character, which I think in turn made me feel differently about him, as Ani feels differently about Igor.”
NeonMikey Madison and Yura Borisov in 'Anora'
By the end of Anora, it almost seems like the title character may have actually found a possibility for true love with Igor, who seems to genuinely care about her more than Vanya. But there’s also a lot of bitterness and disappointment to go around, and the final emotions are complicated and ambiguous. That’s another benefit of working with seasoned actors like Borisov, who previously earned acclaim for his performance in 2021’s Compartment No. 6.
Related: Cannes-winning Anora director on mashing genres: 'I love tonal jumps. I love roller coasters.'
“It was so great to have Mikey, Mark, and Yura really get into the development of their characters and understand why things are happening,” Baker says. “We’re dealing with some complex relationships, especially at the end with Ani’s gravitation towards Igor. That stuff was discussed a lot, like what’s going on in Ani’s head in that ending scene? It was great to have actors who were so invested because they wanted to discuss this.”
Anora is in theaters now.
Anora confirms near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes rating ahead of UK release
Stefania Sarrubba
Mon, October 28, 2024
Anora confirms near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes rating NEON
Sean Baker's NYC-set fable Anora has wowed critics, confirming an almost perfect Rotten Tomatoes score.
The filmmaker's latest tale of characters on the margins follows titular heroine Anora AKA Ani (Scream's Mikey Madison), a sharp-tongued stripper who embarks on an unlikely, whirlwind romance with Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the bratty son of a Russian oligarch.
The 139-minute runtime feels breezy as the joyous movie descends into pure, messy madness, packing an emotional punch in a cathartic, if polarising, finale.
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Months after its Palme d'Or win at Cannes, Anora is Certified Fresh thanks to a 99% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics blown away by Madison's performance and Baker's direction.
Released in the US on October 18, Anora is ready to hit UK cinemas on November 1. Ahead of its release this side of the pond, let's have a look at what has been said about one of the most anticipated movies of the year.
Slate
It's a crowd-pleaser, funny and sexy and raucous, while also being startlingly wise and tender.
Autostraddle
Anora's practically seamless tonal shifts and sharp performances make for a strong, defined comedy with dramatic weight. Although the film carries its head high for nearly the entire runtime, it might just undersell itself in the last moments.
Rolling Stone
[Mikey Madison] exits stage left as an above-the-title star. Then, just when you've think you've seen the full multitudes of this working-class martyr, the actor downshifts and manages to crack you in two.
Neon
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Associated Press
Anora both embraces and transcends the cliches. It's not trying to pretend that it's not exploitative on some level; that might even be the point. And anyway, you might be surprised just how quickly you commit to this once-in-a-lifetime ride.
The New York Times
Sometimes a movie actually earns the old cliché of a 'star-making turn', and I'm here to say that Sean Baker's Anora is this year's star maker.
Los Angeles Times
Baker wrote the part for her, and Madison returned the favor with a star-making performance, leaning into Ani's audacity while revealing the fragile façade, the vulnerabilities and self-deception lurking underneath.
Time Out
It shouldn't all be so funny, but it is, and it's to Baker's huge credit that he's able to inspire laughs and huge enjoyment from this madcap story without leaving you feeling that the woman at the heart of this mess has been short-changed.
Mashable
Altogether, Anora is a visceral experience, making its audience not voyeurs but one of the crew. Thus embedded, our pulses race, our eyes grow wide, our hearts dance as our heroes do. Anora offers a glorious thrill, as bold as it is brilliant.
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RogerErbert.com
Anora is boundlessly alive with a quality we've seen continually in the movies of Sean Baker, among the most humanist filmmakers working today. There is joy next to sadness. There is comedy inside a tragedy.
BBC.com
Anora fizzes with energy and laugh-out-loud moments, but it isn't recommended for anyone with high blood pressure.
Little White Lies
While the film remains entertaining thanks to the calibre of the performances, there are few surprises in store and not many places for Ani's character to go.
The Daily Beast
The film is very funny, until it punches you in the gut with a beautiful ending, and it entirely rests on Madison's performance as the tough-as-nails Anora.
Anora is out in US cinemas now. In the UK, the film is released on November 1.
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