marina’s review published on Letterboxd:
ok so that was not a love story but a tragedy that in its condensation of intrapersonal whorephobia reconfirms negative biases about sex workers having a vapid and degenerate lust for money and ani deserving the violence inherent in the job instead of interrogating the relationship of capitalism and risk in sex work
the plot was so creepy similar to my life like i’m slavic, i did sex work on the side then full time while i was fake married to a russian-armenian, his parents found out as a rumor we got engaged, and it was a disaster and would have been worse if they knew about my FT sex work. that being said i can’t relate to ani bc she’s so compressed as a character. you don’t know why she’s a stripper and “for the money” isn’t a sufficient answer. you don’t know why she would take such an insane risk to those of us who are pros so you can’t empathize.
you’re given no motivation other than she is lower class and enjoys having fun when she’s not at work. even her comments about health insurance fall flat because we never see anora struggle to pay her bills or deal with an expensive health concern for her or even a family member. she doesn’t even have motivation for children like she’s a RUSSIAN broad and there’s no pressure to get married and have a kid from her family like that would never happen so w/o motivation to make as much money as possible why give up the strip club for a jobless nepo baby????
it’s tragedy without the proper tragic heroine like anyone seen les miserables??? we can tolerate her portrayal going THRU it bc she has motivation (a child) to keep singing her bald pussy off so that’s why the working girls are feeling hollow and even a little punished by anora
not that it has to be a baby but like damn bitch has no hobbies outside of drinking and smoking ??? a dream? something that humanizes her risk taking behavior to play the part of trophy wife???? she’s just as immature as vanya and needs to accept the punishment for being carefree
and the ending scene was whack i don’t even want to talk about pity fucking a dude who very much participated in abducting and verbal abusing u that made my skin CRAWL
personally i’m just tired of these narratives that end in pity and sadness that are not written by actual SW bc it does feel fetishizing our suffering for which is over done tbh like if sean was really about it he’d give us an aileen wuornos did nothing wrong flick
this is just me being slavic with my criticism about the slavic sex worker movie like if ani had a bit more depth and humor was not used in violent scenarios and men were not holding a sobbing woman in the end i would have said it’s my fav movie of the year. but im a hag