Anora
Love is a hustle.
A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.
Wokeness: 60%
Overall Score: 50%
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Pretty Woman on meth
Anora is a stripper in a Brooklyn bar. One night, one of her customers is Ivan, the son of Russian oligarchs. Ivan takes a shine to Anora, offering her a mountain of cash to become his "sex friend" for a week. The young girl discovers a world of insane luxury and non-stop partying, and the couple head off to Las Vegas to prolong the fiesta, where Ivan decides on a whim to marry Anora. When her parents, who had stayed behind in Russia, heard the news, they were furious and asked their man of trust, Toros, who had moved to New York, to "restore order to the chaos" and break up the marriage... How would Anora and Ivan manage?
In "Anora", the director focuses on a different kind of ‘sex worker’, this Anora who suddenly finds herself embracing a Cinderella destiny. The irresistible charm of Sean Baker's cinema lies not so much in the originality of his plots as in the affectionate, non-judgemental way in which he looks at his characters. In ‘Anora’, all the protagonists are endearing. First of all, of course, there is the young girl, who is inevitably a little venal because she has no desire to remain a stripper for the rest of her life. Then there's Ivan, a young daddy's boy who's as sympathetic as he is immature and irresponsible, and who spends his parents' inheritance from the other side of the Atlantic on his own in his big villa. Then there's Toros, the henchman, totally overwhelmed by events, and flanked by a Russian accomplice, Igor, who is much less of a brute than he seems... All these characters are played by actors who are little known in our country, but all of them are absolutely terrific, starting with Mikey Madison, who is unforgettable in the role of Anora, a role that will very probably earn her a few handsome awards.
Film review by Hugues Dayez.
Created: 05-27-2025
Oh, NO! Hell no!! This is NOT Pretty Woman!
According to the press, Anora is supposed to subvert the urban fairy tale of Pretty Woman, but it ends up being a movie that tries to legitimize the shitty behavior of white-trash people. It’s directionless, long, and empty. Beneath a failed comedy and an erratic tone, it offers a frivolous, whitewashed portrayal of prostitution, with a completely wrong take on what it actually is, despite the press trying to sell it as a “male gaze” critique, when it’s not. It’s just Sean Baker’s gaze, and the gaze of the people who paid to make this movie known.
The protagonist is a flat, objectified character with no real motivations, and the supposed class or social conflict never gets developed. The humor is simply bad, the runtime is excessive, and potentially dramatic situations turn into pointless slapstick. The film comes off as offensive (especially to women), shallow, and lacking any real substance, recognized more for marketing and propaganda than for what should actually matter—and which it doesn’t have: narrative merit.
Conclusion: Another movie inflated by the mainstream press, desperately trying to ride the success of a much better film made without all the DEI bullshit and the whole woke movement, just to have a shot at relevance → and still failing to even stand as a movie on its own.
Created: 01-13-2026
