Review: Anora (Patreon)

"I don't have Instagram; I'm an adult" is a line for the ages.

Sean Baker's genuinely empathetic fascination with sex workers is still refreshing. Sex work is a profession that gives its workers a microcosmic glimpse of the whole world, sort of like driving an Uber or a taxi or journalism. While Tangerine was a slice-of-life story about a sex worker, Anora is more heightened, depicting an extreme life-changing event in a sex worker's life. I remarked to my friends that the tow truck scene feels like a story I'd cover for work. I stand by that, but the rest of the movie is more like John Cassavetes shooting Cinderella.

Anora is extraordinarily funny. Toros is the Malcolm Tucker of the 2020s, and I'd love to see a whole TV show about him. But we're looking at a sex worker story where the best bits belong to other characters. Unlike Tangerine, Anora mostly follows events that happen to its protagonist, rather than ones she initiates. Ani is a bit of an object in her own story — a real problem when it comes to one of the most objectified labor classes under stratified capitalism. From a movie where a sex worker tells her boss to give her health insurance and a 401k, the incongruity is extra disappointing. Intensely funny movie, and extremely well-directed and edited, but Baker can do better.