Sean Baker has flown under my radar for way too long. While I’ve certainly heard of The Florida Project, Tangerine, and Red Rocket, I somehow never got around to any of those movies. That said, even a cursory glance of his filmography (the aforementioned Red Rocket and Tangerine, plus Starlet) will show that sex workers are a recurring interest to Baker.

So here we are with Anora, which was heavily marketed as a star-crossed romance about a stripper and a client who fall in love and get married, only to be met with the husband’s disapproving family. Fuck that noise. I did not want to see that movie. Luckily, neither did Baker.

See, if I had been more familiar with Baker’s work (or perhaps looked more closely at the relevant Wikipedia pages), I would know that Baker has built a solid career out of humanizing sex workers and destigmatizing the trade. Even better, he brought on an actual sex worker to consult on this project. And the project is much better for it. So let’s take it from the top.

This is the story of Anora (Mikey Madison), a stripper who lives and works in New York. A daughter of immigrants from somewhere in the former Soviet bloc, Anora speaks fluent Russian, though her diction is a bit rusty. That’s good enough for Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), who comes into the club looking to throw fat stacks of cash to a stripper who speaks Russian. Then comes the punchline: Vanya is the son of a notorious Russian arms dealer.

Let’s pause for a moment and unpack what we’ve got so far.

You know the delusional fuckwit who believes that a stripper really has fallen in love with him? The misogynist shitbag who thinks that he literally owns a girl and is thus entitled to sex because he feeds her compliments and money and flashy gifts? The nepo baby asshole who’s never really accomplished anything for himself, but thinks he’s king of the universe because of who he’s connected to?

That’s the kind of shitheel we’ve got with Vanya. Except that he’s got enough money and power to put him above any kind of legal consequence. And all that same “fuck you” money and power come from Russian weapons dealers. Worst of all, Vanya doesn’t have nearly as much control over his parents’ empire as his ego would suggest. Vanya is seriously dangerous, and not in the way he would have anyone believe.

And Anora? Well, of course she’s going to boost Vanya’s ego with flattery and sex, that’s literally her job. Anyone with half a brain could figure out that Anora is only interested in Vanya as a paying client, and she’s only leading him on for so long because he’s got that much money to willingly spend. And of course she’s happy to take the expensive gifts, and the private jet rides, and the parties in Vegas, and so on. She’s a sex worker, living hand-to-mouth on whatever private dances she can hustle out of club patrons, and she’s landed herself a whale. It’s tough to blame her for getting too greedy, such that Anora doesn’t realize until too late how far in over her head she is.

But then Anora and Vanya get married (because by that point, Anora is already in this too deep to get out, so why not?) which brings Vanya’s family into the equation. And that’s when things get really interesting.

As the back half of the film unfolds, the Anora/Vanya interplay gets increasingly convoluted. At some point, this isn’t just about Anora trying (quite literally fighting tooth and nail, enough to knock three grown men on their asses all at once) to protect her meal ticket from those who would have the marriage annulled. After all, even if the marriage was preserved, Vanya’s family would have him cut off and Anora would be no less broke on the street (and with a dipshit husband, to boot). There must be something else going on here.

It’s entirely possible that Anora simply doesn’t take well to strangers barging into her home and telling her what to do, and she’s responding out of spite. Or maybe she’s trying to somehow position herself for the most profitable outcome. Or maybe — just maybe — Anora is trying to convince herself that she didn’t get suckered into marrying a preening loser douchebag. After all, Anora is a professional at selling herself as a fantasy — could it be that Vanya was selling himself as the impossibly perfect strip club client so that she would come along and be a part of whatever fucked-up rager he’s putting on?

Another important factor is the overarching theme of adulthood. Again, Vanya is comfortably living in his father’s wallet, partying all night and playing video games all day without any sense of responsibility toward himself or others. At least Anora is working at her job and making her own money, but we see just enough of her home life to know that she’s not very good at looking after herself or her roommates. We therefore have to ask if either of these two can really be considered “adults” in any way that matters. At the very least, are either one of them capable of soundly and rationally making such a huge decision as whom they get to marry?

And then we have our antagonists. I feel obligated to point out Diamond (Lindsey Normington), the comic relief bitch acting as a bully and a rival to Anora in the club. I’ve got a strong suspicion that this is an inside joke — I have it on good authority that literally every strip club has a “Diamond” on the roster, and it’s always the most basic bitches who pick the most uninspired stripper name ever.

More importantly, there’s the matter of Vanya’s family and their employees. Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) is your typical meat-headed enforcer. Toros (Karren Karagulian) is supposedly the family fixer, but he’s a pompous short-tempered asshat who tries to brute-force every problem with no tact or intelligence whatsoever. And of course we have Vanya’s parents (played by Darya Ekamasova and Aleksey Serebryakov), both hypocritical windbags who vocally insist that their son is oh-so-special even as they chew him out for being stupid and shameful enough to marry *gasp* a prostitute.

The family’s other enforcer (Igor, played by Yura Borisov) deserves special mention because he’s the only one in the cast with no artifice whatsoever. Granted, he’s also silent through most of the runtime, which is certainly another factor that sets him apart from the rest of the cast. But more importantly, he’s the only one who’s completely open and honest with the other characters, the only one who genuinely seems to want the best possible outcome for all involved. Everyone else is pretending to be something they’re not, while Igor is simply taking everything in and waiting to make himself useful.

Even so, Igor still has his limits. Arguably the single most revealing scene comes late in the movie, when one character suggests that maybe somebody should apologize for all the lies and damage and general ugliness that happens over the course of the plot. And nobody ever does. Not Anora, not Vanya, not Igor, not anyone. Even the character who makes the suggestion never apologizes for anything.

From start to finish, all the characters perfectly ride a fine line: heightened enough for comedy, yet grounded enough to stay relatably human. Baker shows a remarkable skill for nuance, playing into the stigmas and stereotypes of sex work while also subverting them at the same time. Of course, a good deal of the latter comes from the mind-blowing breakout performance from Mikey Madison. Kudos are also due to Mark Eydelshteyn’s portrayal of a delusional loser trying to use money, sex, and drugs in place of a personality. But the film’s real secret weapon here is Yura Borisov, who somehow makes Igor endearing and engaging without speaking a word.

Oh, and the soundtrack slaps. That’s definitely another point in the movie’s favor, the songs are awesome.

Anora is deeply impressive all around. It’s a heartfelt and dramatic movie about comically heightened characters, sexy and thought-provoking in equal measure. It’s really quite astonishing how Baker was able to craft a movie that effectively balances so many different tones and concepts. This turned out to be a movie far more intelligent and subversive than the trailers gave credit for.

It should go without saying that a movie about strippers and criminals won’t be for all tastes. But if you’re up for a violent, profane, debauched movie about idiots too proud and greedy to know when they’re in too far over their heads, definitely give this a look.