Beautiful, Dirty, Rich

I watched Anora over the weekend – no spoilers here

Over the weekend, I went out with Blanche, my yoga teacher and friend, and Maeve, one of my classmates from yoga class, to watch Anora. After more than two years of living here in Montpellier, I finally got a subscription at Diagonal, an independent moviehouse near our place, which finally meant I could expand my watchlist beyond what’s available on Netflix, Prime Videos, and Mubi. Of course, it also meant trading the comfort of staying in, cocooned in a blanket in front of the television, for the rare chance to be surrounded by people who give running commentaries in French – and the pleasure of hearing someone shush them.

I didn’t know much about Anora except that it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year and that it was directed by Sean Baker, who for some reason I mistook for Sam Levinson, the director of Euphoria. You can’t blame me for it because the vibes were the same: young people, drugs, sex, violence. (I later realized he was the same guy behind The Florida Project and Tangerine.)

The movie centers on Ani, a 23-year-old escort who doesn’t like her given name that much. While at work, she meets a bratty rich boy, Ivan, who hires her for sex and eventually to be his girlfriend. She later discovers that Ivan is the son of a Russian oligarch. At first, I thought it would devolve into a story about how she ends up embroiled in some drug or human trafficking syndicate. The two-hour wild goose chase ends without revealing what business the family is into.

I won’t reveal much and spoil the movie for anyone. What I would reveal, though, is that Yuri Borisov, who played the brooding Russian guy from another Cannes winner, Compartment No. 6, was also in the film as another brooding Russian guy. He seems to excel at this character, although I must confess I’ve yet to watch more of his movies. My Russian friend Olga told me he’s getting quite popular now.

I’m probably showing my age and level of privilege here, but I found it initially challenging to empathize with Ani’s life choices and the consequences she had to endure. It’s not about her being an escort, but how she bet everything on someone who was obviously incapable of managing his own life. Then again, one could argue that she had not a lot to lose to begin with, and the appeal of unlocking this rarefied world, especially for a young girl like her, was just too much to turn away from.

As a former nerdy, acne-ridden, introverted, middle-class gay teenager, I knew how it felt to be an outsider and not to be able to afford the things that you like, to feel so uncertain about your future that you cling on to anything that offers a chance to escape. My career eventually provided that, and I was lucky for it – but at the same time, I wondered as a young man how great it would be to have something handed to you, not because of talent or perseverance, but because, well, you just deserved it. I secretly envied some of my classmates and eventually my peers for being at the top of the social pyramid because their parents were wealthy and spoiled them rotten.

To digress, they recently announced that “The Simple Life” will get a reboot. Isn’t it ironic when rich people cosplay poverty to entertain poor people who want to become rich? Marie Antoinette should’ve made people laugh; maybe that would have made people reconsider chopping her head off.