For a film to become popular culture, it’s not that easy. Few people succeed. pretty woman is one of them. Garry Marshall’s 1990 film, titled after the Roy Orbison song that the film itself would bring back into fashion, was nothing more than a restatement of the Cinderella story with a twist that, in the 90s, was considered modern. Here, the poor half-sister condemned to cleaning while waiting to find a prince charming was replaced by a prostitute with the charisma of Julia Roberts, and the whore prince had the features of Richard Gere.
As in the story, the film was an idealization of romantic relationships and, above all, of the fact that a poor woman had only one chance to succeed: to find a rich partner. There was something pernicious in Cinderella that in pretty woman it multiplied. No one can ask for a story of class consciousness, but in the film it’s not that there wasn’t one, but rather that the parallel was drawn between the savior prince and the wealthy businessman who got her lover out of prostitution.
34 years have passed and it took filmmaker Sean Baker, whose career has been based on observing the margins of American society, to turn the situation around. The director of films like Red rocket, The Florida Project either Tangerine remained consistent in his career and proposed the opposite of pretty woman In Anoraa frenetic anti-romantic comedy that turns history on its head. But as always with him, without miserabilism, with humor and giving dignity to all his characters.
Baker will never use the word prostitute to refer to his character when talking about himself, but rather Anora who gives her name to the film is a sex worker like all those who inhabit her cinema. He dedicated to them the Palme d’Or that he won with this film which, after winning the most prestigious festival in the world, reached the first stage of the awards race as one of the favorites to triumph. At least in the Oscar nominations, where Baker can get his first nomination and where his protagonist, a towering Mikey Madison, should find himself no problem.
For a seasoned director raised in the independent world, this success is “life-changing”, and Sean Baker himself recognizes it. Winning the Palme d’Or was “a dream come true”. “It’s like now the second part of my life is starting. It’s a kind of existential crisis. I think this will allow me to continue making these types of films as I wish, but with fewer restrictions and less resistance. So it’s a good thing, especially now that independent films are more and more difficult to make”, he explains and specifies that he is not afraid to be tempted by the industry: “I I’ve been there before, and now it has strengthened me. “Now I need to make sure I can pursue my vision.”
Anora had the biggest budget of his career, but it remains small compared to what a Hollywood film costs. This headroom made the film “feel a little bigger.” But he believes the film’s success lies in the fact that it “plays with classic romantic comedy tropes, and it’s a very conventional genre.” “People recognize the codes of this film, and it hooks them. The first hour is the story of Cinderella, we’ve seen it before, but I’m doing it with a twist,” he says about the success of his eighth film. That’s why he’s happy that the success has come now and not before, because he doesn’t know if he could have handled it the same way before: “I’m at an age where I’m more secure, I have more confidence and I’m not going to let it seduce me. The industry could have easily seduced me in the past, not now.
I’m at an age where I’m more secure, I have more confidence and I’m not going to be seduced. The industry could have easily seduced me in the past, not now
Sean Baker
— Director
Once again, sex workers are the protagonists of the film, in this case Anora, who will have a fleeting relationship with the son of a Russian oligarch. And as always in his cinema, the main thing is not to judge them and to give them dignity. “Obviously I could have made it a lot darker and more miserable,” he confesses, but says one of the reasons he didn’t go for that tone was to hook people and entertain them before hitting him – and there, that heartbreaking final scene. But the turn of Anora is that it is the class difference and the power relations between the characters which mark everything.
There is, once again in Sean Baker, a brutal X-ray of the United States, and although the question of class is important, he also emphasizes that he believes that the way Anora is treated also has to do “with the lack of respect for sex work around the world. “The attitude of Ivan’s parents is that of almost all normal parents. I try not to judge my characters, and I know it’s hard not to judge Ivan for what he does to Anora, for his lack of empathy. My greatest judgment as a narrator is in terms of class struggle. In the film, I address power dynamics and hierarchies in the United States and around the world, and it always has to do with class and that was intentional,” says Baker, who admits that it is difficult for him to say that his films are political even if they are because I saw how conservatives tried to appropriate the discourse of The Florida Project. “Obviously they are political because we all have an ideology. Let’s say my political ideas are in my films, you just have to dig them out,” he adds.
During his visit to the San Sebastian Film Festival, Baker claimed that Almodóvar had a “direct influence on his cinema”, but he also demonstrated his knowledge of other lesser-known names like Eloy de la Iglesia and Jess Franco, of which he underlined his “sensitivity”. .” independent”, his “carefree and endearing production” and “the way he photographed his muses, in particular Soledad Miranda, whose image with a red scarf has a direct link with Anora“.
