Anora doesn’t try to be Beautiful woman, although Sean Baker is flattered by the comparisons. The writer-director didn’t think about how his film could be considered a grittier take on the romantic comedy until someone pointed it out to him in the first week of production.
“To me, that feels like we just need more representation of sex work,” he told Yahoo Entertainment.
Baker said the film, now in theaters after winning the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, is also an upbeat story about a sex worker who falls in love with a rich man – but only in the beginning. Lots of it Anora‘s running time is spent figuring out whether the hasty marriage between the title character and the son of a Russian billionaire is meant to last.
“I’m basically giving the audience a classic romantic comedy about sex work [roughly] an hour of the film and leaves the audience in the sobering reality of it for the next 90 minutes,” he said.
Sex work was part of five of Baker’s eight films. During his research process, he met sex workers who became both his advisors and his friends. They are not nearly as “one-dimensional” as pop culture portrays them.
“I realized there are a million stories to tell in that world… and I never wanted just one of my films to represent all of sex work,” Baker said. “I certainly don’t want it to be seen as a joke on my part, but I feel like these stories are important [because] the stigma attached to sex work still exists.”
To ensure that her character, Anora, felt like a “seasoned dancer” and a complete human being, Mikey Madison trained for months with Los Angeles-based dancer Kennady Schneider, the film’s movement consultant, who taught her how to do pole tricks, twerking. and giving lap dances. Madison read memoirs, watched documentaries, spent time in clubs and even learned Russian to master her character’s backstory.
“I asked myself maybe 200 questions about her life… just so I was completely clear about who I was playing,” Madison told Yahoo Entertainment. “I have so much respect for sex workers and what they do. … I wanted to do my due diligence and research and study so I could play [Anora] in an honest way.”
She and Baker both said they didn’t want to try to portray “the universal experience of sex workers” because Anora is just a small glimpse into a woman’s life. However, Madison wanted to talk to as many people as possible so that she could include the things that were meaningful to Anora in her story.
“Sean and I talked about that at length… we didn’t want the character to be sensationalized or dramatized in a negative way,” Madison said. “We wanted it to be very honest and real.”
The community’s response to Madison’s hard work was on display in September during a special screening for dancers and sex workers. She organized the event together with Lindsey Normington, a sex worker who plays Anora’s rival Diamond in the film.
“To walk into a room and have a bunch of beautiful dancers applaud by clicking their Pleasers [high heels] together in the air was a unique experience that I will never forget,” said Madison. “No amount of applause will ever match that.”
Renee Olstead wrote about her vision in Penthouse Anora as a sex worker and said Baker has taken the necessary steps to “portray sex workers as human beings rather than sterile avatars of vice and virtue.”
She told Yahoo Entertainment that the film stands out in the field of “flattened depictions of sex workers.”
“We’re either the bad guy, or someone too far gone to be saved, or something Beautiful womanwhich feels benevolent but very convenient,” Olstead said. “I think it’s really important to show Anora as a real person who makes mistakes… when we’re talking about more nuanced portrayals of sex workers.”
Olstead said what makes Anora What is special is the number of sex workers who appear in the film, even if they are not experienced actors, such as Sophia Carnabuci and Luna Sofía Miranda. They get to tell stories about their own community, while having those stories elevated by an award-winning filmmaker.
“I think there’s also something really special when you see sex workers willing to share space,” Olstead said. “And I think that’s kind of the hallmark of mutual aid … when people have an opportunity or resources, share them with others and lift up the community a little bit.”
She explained that the entertainment industry often struggles to “find the balance between intrigue and stigma,” but that focusing on real sex workers is a great way to give the broader population a better understanding of what they do.
“Sometimes we are just the metaphor for exploitation,” Olstead said. “But I think the fact that we are seen as human beings and recognized for our strengths as a community … will push sex workers further to the fore when it comes to having conversations about themselves.”
