The real nightmare in Sean Baker’s 'Anora' isn’t what you expect

The real nightmare in Sean Baker’s 'Anora' isn’t what you expect toggle caption Neon On paper, plenty about the premise of Sean Baker’s Anora suggests the high possibility that a vexing nightmare is about to unfold. After just a few days, they have a quickie Vegas wedding – no pre-nup – and word gets back to Vanya’s parents back in Russia, who definitely won’t stand for their goofy son bringing “shame” upon the family by marrying a “prostitute.” They deploy his handler Toros to ensure the marriage is annulled; Toros in turn enlists a couple of burly henchmen to wrangle the couple and get them down to the courthouse. Sponsor Message Being a pop culture enthusiast who’s consumed an untold number of gritty American thrillers from the ‘80s and ‘90s and an embarrassingly incalculable number of hours of Law & Order: SVU, I’ve become accustomed to expecting the bleakest while hoping for the best when encountering any of Anora’s elements on screen – sex workers, Russian oligarchs, whirlwind Vegas marriages, etc. Sponsor Message Still, the same judgmental attitudes Vanya’s parents cast upon Ani persist in real life — most recently, for example, in social media chatter following the accusations and criminal charges against Sean “Diddy” Combs. Baker seems to have anticipated certain genre expectations, as well as the realities of violence’s pervasiveness: After the marriage is officially kaput and pitiful Vanya’s on his way back to Russia with his parents, Ani asks Igor suspiciously why he didn’t try to rape her; she seems almost offended by his passiveness.