At this year’s Oscars, millions watched as an independent film about a professional sex worker who marries a Russian oligarch — only to get dumped when his parents show up — took home five Oscars, including best picture.
But “Anora” isn’t quite so easily boiled down: Thanks to lead actress winner Mikey Madison (Ani) — and many scenes with her co-star, supporting actor nominee Yura Borisov (Igor) — it’s clear there’s more to this story.
So what was the movie all about? Why is the final car scene important — and why does Ani cry? Let’s jump in, kicking and screaming, just like Ani would.
Note: Spoilers for “Anora” ahead.
What happens in ‘Anora’?
Ani works in a strip club, providing exotic dance experiences to the patrons — and she’s good at what she does.
When the callow young son of a Russian oligarch, Ivan (Mark Edelshteyn), takes a shine to her, they take the party away from the club and discover they like having fun together. He has the money, she’s easy with sex, and they’re just a couple of wild kids enjoying a few days of lust.
That is, until Ivan realizes that if he marries her he can stay in the US and not go back home to be a grown-up, working at his father’s company. Ani is initially unsure, but decides to go for the ride.
They hit Las Vegas and marry in a quickie chapel, continuing the party until his parents get word of what he’s done … and send thugs to pry the pair apart. This is easier than you’d think, because when Ivan’s parents’ cronies show up to Ivan’s house, he gives them the slip and leaves Ani to deal with the fallout.
Ani turns into a tiger, refusing to be bound, silenced or told she has to get divorced. While searching for the errant Ivan — and as his parents fly over from Russia to get the job done — the thugs, including a sympathetic Igor, haul Ani around New York City trying to find the young man.
In the end, this Cinderella story does not have a happy ending. Ivan’s parents ensure the divorce happens, leaving Ani in a precarious position, her life changed forever.
Why is the final car scene important?
Whether or not you’ve approved of Ani’s choices throughout the film, it’s hard not to admire the way she simply does not give in. She bellows her lungs out, kicks, punches, bites and does whatever she can to try and get away from the thugs who’ve bound her up.
They’re reasonable reasonable thugs, as thugs go: They just want her to sign a divorce agreement, take some hush money, and go away. But for a very long time she’s positive Ivan has no interest in letting her go. Ani — and Mikey — truly gives her all.
“I wanted to flip it on its head,” director, writer, editor and producer Sean Baker told Entertainment Weekly. “We give you a romantic comedy for the first 50 minutes, and we even sandwich it with a quintessential song, Take That’s ‘The Greatest Day,’ which is maybe a song you would hear in a ‘Love, Actually’ sort of movie. But then we’re giving you another 90 minutes of reality after that.’”
And after that 90 minutes of reality, Ani is wiped out emotionally and physically. She’d believed that this was going to change her life for the better, and that Ivan could be someone she could be with for the long haul. But he chose not to stand up for her, and she is repeatedly humiliated by his family (at one point, his mom calls her a “disgusting hooker”).
In the final scene, she’s left in a car with Igor — the one character who has shown her compassion and has not seen her in a transactional way — and two important things happen: She breaks down, and they start to become intimate.
“It’s been interesting to hear other people’s interpretations, because (the ending is) so open-ended, and I’m more curious to hear what other people think — if they think that the characters will end up together or not, or why they think they end up having sex,” Madison told Interview Magazine.
One interpretation is that Ani uses sex as a way to thank Igor. But when he starts to kiss her, she turns away and starts crying. Sex becomes something that is more than transactional — and it appears to overwhelm her.
Baker saw the sex in that scene as less transactional and more empowering in an interview with IndieWire.
“I see (the sex) as being about her and not really something that she’s giving to him but something in which she’s now regaining the power that she lost entirely throughout this journey,” he said.
Why does Ani cry in that car?
Crying before she’s lost everything, before she’s in a safe place, would be a sign of weakness — as Ani, and undoubtedly the Russians around her — would see it.
But after everything’s been lost and she’s now around the one person she can feel some level of safe with, Igor, Ani can finally let the tension, the stress, the adrenaline and the anger come pouring out. So she cries.
“Yura is such a soulful actor,” Madison said in an interview with Isabelle Huppert for Interview Magazine. “The whole film, my character has been covering up her emotions with a hardness, not letting anybody see her crack, so I found myself also feeling like that during filming. I was never emotional, and me as Mikey, I’m a very emotional person. For the last scene, I was almost shaking going into the car because I didn’t know what that would feel like — because I had been feeling the same way as my character for so long.”