Spoilers for Anora.
It’s no nice secret that Hollywood has lengthy peddled a sure sexist fantasy to girls – the fantasy that real love means being saved. It goes one thing like this: a younger lady in dire circumstances meets a rich or highly effective man and, towards all odds, they fall in love and her troubles soften away. This outdated fantasy has cropped up in quite a few iconic on-screen love tales, whether or not it’s Disney’s Cinderella, any Jane Austen adaptation, the 1954 Audrey Hepburn movie Sabrina, Jennifer Lopez’s 2002 Maid in Manhattan, nearly each Netflix Christmas film a few fake European prince, or, maybe most famously, Garry Marshall’s Fairly Girl.
Anora has already created fairly a stir for supposedly debunking this trope. Directed by Sean Baker, the movie follows Ani (Mikey Madison), a younger erotic dancer and intercourse employee, who has a whirlwind romance with Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), a younger rich Russian shopper. After the pair spontaneously marry in Las Vegas, Ani thinks she has gained the lottery – however her fantasy quickly comes crashing down when Ivan’s mother and father and connections arrive to convey the younger couple again to actuality. In different phrases, the movie units us up for the all-too acquainted rags-to-riches romance then throws the picture-perfect Hollywood fantasy again into our faces in a dizzying explosion of glitter and neon.
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It’s subsequently, as so many critics have famous, the anti-Fairly Girl: the story of a intercourse employee who doesn’t get her Hollywood joyful ending, it’s being lauded as a feminist triumph. However in dismantling this fantasy, Baker’s movie isn’t as precisely empowering because it seems. Why? As a result of the movie fails to dig into the sexism that’s embedded into the fantasy itself. As an alternative of flipping the Fairly Girl narrative by saying “she doesn’t must be saved” and even “she will be able to save herself”, the movie provides us a brand new fantasy that hinges across the male gaze. It suggests “she simply must be saved by the proper man, by a good man – he may not be wealthy, however he’ll actually perceive her.”
Our heroine does need to be saved. She daydreams about her personal Disney ending and when she meets Ivan, her fairy story looks as if it’s coming true. First, Ivan asks her to be his “girlfriend for every week.” He agrees to her $15,000 phrases and the pair spend an opulent whirlwind week collectively pouring his mother and father’ cash into slot machines, knocking again champagne and customarily partying it up until daybreak. Ivan spontaneously asks Anora to marry him; she, after a second of disbelief at her luck, says sure. It’s not precisely a love story for the ages, however he’s good (or appears to be) they usually have enjoyable collectively. The fantasy appears to have reached its conclusion – in a blissful montage, the ecstatic couple dart right into a Las Vegas chapel and tie the knot. Ani heads again to her grimey membership to gather her issues and flaunt her success to her co-workers. “You caught your whale,” one among them says enviously. If the movie was Fairly Girl, it might finish right here.