The Anora Ending: What We Think Happened

The buzz around Sean Baker’s Anora, finally available to rent on OTT in India, doesn’t seem to die down. The Oscars race frontrunner stars a spectacular Mikey Madison as Ani, a lapdancer in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn (New York City) who marries Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the wasteful son of a Russian oligarch after they meet at her place of work and hit it off... sort of.

After a few days in paradise—which is mostly video games, blow, copulation—reality shows up. Vanya's parents get wind of their son's antics and members of their trusted network within the area come knocking. After a hysterical argument, the prince flees anticlimactically and the wife finds herself in a situation stickier than the ones she’s used to dealing with. Made hostage by these strange-looking enforcers (an Orthodox priest, an Armenian thug and a Russian skinhead), she assists in the haphazardly organised manhunt.

If you’ve read thus far, you’ve made it to the end of the film. And are probably wondering what the final scene means. It's snowing and Ani's in the car with Igor, the sensitive, and silent member of Toros’ gang, outside her apartment. Throughout the manhunt and the annulment of her marriage, Igor has “protected” Ani ("from herself", he says) throughout the ordeal, been a silent ally graciously absorbing all the taunts and insults she has thrown at him—and even nicked her wedding ring from his boss Toros (Karren Karragulian). He is clearly in love with her. Or he is just a decent guy. Who knows?

Once Igor hands the ring back to her and gently wheels her bags up to her doorstep, Ani, overcome with something, jumps up over him and initiates sex. Midway through the act, Igor attempts to kiss her. Ani resists, then stops and begins punching and slapping him violently, and finally breaks down over his chest wailing. A dumbstruck Igor continues to stare at her and it continues to snow outside.

Theories and explanations around Ani’s decision to offer herself that way to Igor haven’t stopped swirling. A lot of viewers have interpreted this abrupt change in emotion as Ani reading Igor's niceness as his need for her to have sex with him.

When Igor continues to be nice to her—to the extent that he drops her bags at her doorstep—she cannot control herself anymore and wants to instantly return the favour. Because she sees Igor's warmth as a favour (and of course, implicitly, as the quintessential nice boy tactic to get laid), she doesn't want to see his overtures as anything more than give-and-take.

Despite all those explanations making sense within the realm of conjecture and theory, when I watched the film, it felt essential to interpret her actions from the transactional mores of the rest of the world of Baker's films. With the director having refused to answer the question, here's what we think happened.

For Ani, sex with Igor isn't quite the same as sex with someone like Ivan, who she has dared and allowed herself to be swept up in a romantic shitstorm with. That chapter of her life is an exception to the rest of her dealings—transactional. Her mechanical urgency to get it over with is more telling of the narrative leanings of the film’s director, Sean Baker, which prioritise the utilitarian detachment of sex work—something he did also with The Florida Project (2017).

Since the film has been widely interpreted as a fairytale subverted, it's all the more reason to see her refusal to have the same kind of emotional entanglement with someone who comes from the same station in life as she does (or even lower; Igor is a small-time Russian ruffian).

In the film, Ani's connection with Ivan—and the plunge she decided to take by marrying him—is her shot at upward mobility and, hence, loveFilmNation Entertainment and Cinereach

Much like in a fairytale, Ani has dared to dream of a life with real love—with someone her own age and someone she can be organically attracted to. She has dared to dream of upward mobility. When Ivan shows up at her club, treats her better than most men have, asks her to be his consort for the week and goes on to ask her to marry him, it is a huge, huge leap for this ambitious young woman. Since she's already seen sex as passionless, as a commodity for earning livelihood, she doesn't entirely associate it with love. In her relationship with Ivan, she brings loyalty, adoration and admiration—but she cannot possibly offer Igor even a fraction from the spectrum of genuine emotional connection.

When you interpret Ani's refusal to kiss Igor as her refusal to settle for someone she doesn't deem worthy of her love just because they have been kind to her, it's easy to see that the script gives her agency and choice. It fits in perfectly with the harsh pragmatism that Baker injects into his films, be it Halley in The Florida Project or Mikey Saber in Red Rocket (2021). While the self-centered actions of these characters were driven mostly by the survival instincts borne in them from existing on the margins of society, Ani's choice to withdraw from a potentially genuine connection if it doesn't serve her materially, empowers her. And I'm seeing it as that.