Yon Añora, a young woman who deliberately dedicates herself to sex work, finds herself involved in a Cinderella story. The mercurial Mikey Madison plays Anora, or Ani as everyone calls her, the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch with mob ties who falls for a rich young brat (Mark Eidelstein). Their whirlwind romance quickly unleashes non-stop chaos in Manhattan, Brighton Beach, and Coney Island.
Written and directed by Tangerine and The Florida Project's Sean Baker, the film draws inspiration from Preston Sturges and Federico Fellini in an entertaining and heartwarming comedy. Filmmakers like Baker, always acutely aware of class and economics, accept wholeheartedly that love and romance, with all their joys and tragedies, are transactional. But to make these stories sound as real and authentic as before to some, Baker takes a cue from sex workers.
“He wants to engage the community more than anyone,” Andrea Verhun, a Toronto-based writer and artist, told The Guardian. The man behind the sex work memoir Modern War. She was one of the first dancers and escorts Baker hired as paid consultants while creating Anora. Verhun was on hand to advise on the script and Madison's astonishing performance, providing direct details that Baker absorbed into the film, which is now being touted as a leading Oscar contender. A Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. When she received the award in May, Baker dedicated it to “all sex workers past, present and future.”
Sex work is prevalent in Baker's film: it's work that connects happy women in Tangerine, a thrilling slice-of-life comedy; It's a peripheral but dangerous commitment for a mother in the heartbreaking drama The Florida Project; And that's another of the secondary aspects of Red Rocket, a character study set in working class Texas. These films tend to avoid shock, as there are many other depictions of sex workers that focus solely on revenge. Instead, Baker explores all the other emotions that come with being human, which unfortunately feels exceptional when telling sex worker stories. And he achieves a nuance and sensitivity that comes from collaborating with people around his images.
“That's why their work really targets sex workers,” Verhun says. “We see the work he is doing. Always find the human story. He always finds a funny story, which is a very important part of humanizing people, especially marginalized people. When you find the funny, it can be very powerful.
Like Baker, Verhun uses humor in his conversations and in his work. In film and in her online content, she tends to play the vixen with hints of satire; sometimes you'll be able to catch a full Jim Carrey. . His humor dominates Modern War, in which he offers sharp observations about clients (whether comforting, trustworthy, disappointed or dangerous) and a society at large that still tarnishes the world's oldest profession. While Verhun conveys emotion with humor, she finds the fun without losing sight of the tragedy.
We're having this conversation as Verhun sits in the makeup chair on the Toronto set of Modern War, a film adaptation directed by his frequent collaborator Nicole Basu. Baker is executive producer.
The book, self-published in 2017 by Penguin Random House in an expanded edition (or rather, “pre-published”) in 2022, is a collaborative work. In it, Verhun shares provocative and revealing anecdotes from her days as a private escort and later as a dancer at a Toronto strip club. She writes about satisfying curious fantasies and struggling to maintain boundaries with permitted clients, and explains that a sex worker's trauma does not automatically lead to consumption. Those stories and observations are interspersed with the author's delightfully seductive and witty portraits, composed and photographed by Basuin.
In Modern War, which is expected to be released next year, Verhun plays himself. The hybrid documentary is a highly dramatic recreation of talking head interviews, creating excerpts from Verhun's memoirs through a gender lens. She looks like a lady or a “prostitute with a heart of gold.”
Modern work plays with the tension between book and film, gender and reality, fantasy and the work of creating it. Others have that tension too. While Ani is at work, lap dancing and paying, her exceptional customer service makes it seem like there is no transaction in the deal. She realizes a fantasy. But everything behind that performance – the work of it all – is normal.
Anora foregrounds work, undermining it through minute details: routines, transitions, even the Tupperware Ani eats at work. Verhun notes that he actually had a direct hand in that last part: “Sean told me, 'If you walk into the locker room of a strip club, what can you see?' I said, 'Well, you can watch a dancer eat dinner out of a Tupperware during her break before hitting the dance floor.' He said, 'Oh, I love it!'
There are many details and traits in Anora that will be naturally familiar to anyone who has read Verhun's memoirs: the warm, supportive dynamic between colleagues in a strip club, which, like any workplace, can be compromised by cold competitiveness. ; the sense of ownership that some dancers feel towards their loyal clients; And when those “loyal” clients look for variety in other dancers, an irrational but no less treacherous feeling arises. That doesn't mean Anora eliminates that dynamic from the book, but there is a shared credibility when the community participates in shaping these stories. Her story is part of a broader evolution in the representation of sex workers.
Consider the milestones of the decade since Baker Tangerine was created. Cardi B went from a strip club to a hip-hop star on reality TV. Sex workers have their own stories on social media, including A'Ziah Wells King's (aka The Thotyssey) infamous Twitter thread detailing a wild trip to Florida that became the basis for the film Zola. Recent films, such as the Oscar-winning Poor Things, feature more enlightened views of sex work. Plus, we're at a point where sex workers aren't just checking out movies like Anora and truly representing their community.
“I think there is a logical next step,” says Verhun. “When you have audience members making films about sex workers, doing the work of humanizing us, it opens the door for creators of sex workers to make films on the same level.”
“One of the most wonderful things a partner can do is open that door.”
