The 3 elements of a RITES OF PASSAGE story are:

1) A life problem: from puberty to midlife to death—these are the universal passages we all understand.
2) A wrong way to attack the mysterious problem, usually a diversion from confronting the pain.
3) A solution that involves acceptance of a hard truth the hero has been fighting, and the knowledge it’s the hero that must change, not the world around them.

Rites of Passage – Separation Passage Cousins: Blume In Love, An Unmarried Woman, The War of the Roses, Modern Romance, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Break-Up, The Squid and the Whale, Roman Holiday,  Blue Valentine

Opening Image

The camera pans slowly across a group of bare-breasted sex workers giving lap dances to men, coming to rest on a smiling and gyrating Anora “Ani” Mikheeva (the fantastic Mikey Madison). The scene is glossy and cinematic, paired with an up-tempo pop song with the lyrics “Shine a light on our greatest days,” and sets the incongruous tone for this frenetic soft porn-romance-screwball comedy-wrenching drama.

Set-Up

In her thesis world, Ani lives with her cranky sister in Brighton Beach, a heavily Russian-American area in Brooklyn, and works at a exotic dance club called Headquarters in Manhattan. Good-natured and foul-mouthed, she wanders from creepy man to creepier man, just trying to do her job so she can take a reefer break with her pal, Lulu (Luna Sofia Miranda) and avoid the bitchy Diamond (Lindsey Normington).

Ani’s tough as (acrylic) nails but her jokes about probable serial killers among her clientele hint at the underlying truth: stasis = death is a real possibility in this profession.

Theme Stated

Examining each other’s new tattoos, Lulu longingly compares Ani’s classy butterfly to her “ho” dollar signs. Ani responds firmly, “No, you’re manifesting with those.” Anora Mikheeva is a woman of great aspirations. Someday she’s going to be rich and fly away from this life.

Catalyst

Ani’s boss has a potential client, “a kid who wants someone who can speak Russian.” Enter Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), who makes Ani chuckle since he looks to be a harmless and horny 15-year old.

Debate

What at first seems like “same old, same old” for Ani (she chews gum and blows bubbles while giving Vanya a lap dance) becomes just a hint more personal as she and Vanya bond over their dreadful language skills and discuss the usually off-limits topic of Ani’s Russian grandmother.

When Vanya hires Ani to come to his home for some legit sex, she is stunned by his mansion and obvious wealth—who is this kid? Vanya has her Google his father, who turns out to be the Russian oligarch Nikolai Zakharov (Aleksey Serebryakov), and the clever Ani starts pulling out the stops, trying to spin this into something more than a hire-by-the-hour type of job; she teases, cajoles, dances about in her best naughty schoolgirl outfits, and charges Vanya “holiday rates” at a cocaine-fueled New Year’s Eve party.

Break into Two

Success! Vanya hires Ani to be his exclusive girlfriend for the week, to the tune of 15K—although she quips that she would have done it for 10.

Fun and Games

In this romp of an upside-down world, Ani gets to walk out on Headquarters (but hey, she’ll stay if they give her health insurance and a 401K), only has to screw one person, and is treated like a queen. Vanya and Ani travel to Vegas with a pack of Vanya’s friends and they party madly, gambling, drinking, doing drugs, going to the spa, and having sex in every room in the lavish suite.

Despite being too savvy to fall for a fantasy, Ani can’t help but be charmed by Vanya’s childlike enthusiasm and as the week draws to a close, she cracks open just a tiny bit more, confessing that she’ll miss Vanya when he goes back to Russia. So… maybe he shouldn’t?

Vanya and Ani decide to get married so he can stay in America and they can continue having extremely expensive fun together. Cue the repeat of the opening song and as we again hear “shine a light on our greatest day,” Vanya and Ani tie the knot in a tacky Vegas chapel and run out into the streets, kissing and screaming and laughing under a canopy of fireworks in the night sky.

B Story

Although we don’t meet him until after the Midpoint, Ani’s fractious relationship with Vanya’s bodyguard Igor (Yuri Borisov) will hold up a painful mirror to her growing vulnerability.

Midpoint

Carrying flowers and on her way to pick up a 5-carat diamond, Ani skips merrily out of Headquarters, calling herself Cinderella and bidding farewell to her old life of sex work. Is this the end of Pretty Woman?! Nope, we’re only an hour in to a much darker movie, so it’s just the Midpoint, and a false victory one at that.

Bad Guys Close In

We take an immediate turn, visually and emotionally, as Ani, makeup-free and sporting a new wrinkle of worry between her eyebrows, questions Vanya about his parents’ response to their marriage while he plays video games and all but ignores her.

Meanwhile, Nikolai Zakharov’s “monkeys,” Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor, are sent by Vanya’s Armenian godfather Toros (Karren Karagulian) to the mansion to find out if the rumors about Vanya marrying “some prostitute” are true. Against the poignant backdrop of the dream starting to slowly unravel for Ani, we enter “screwball comedy”-land.

Toros, Garnik, and Igor are the three stooges of Anora, utterly inept and completely flummoxed by Vanya’s new wife—when they try to physically restrain her, she kicks the der’mo out of them, biting Igor badly and breaking Garnik’s nose. When Vanya runs out of the house, abandoning Ani, this freak show goes on the road.

As they drive around to all of Vanya’s haunts, busting every place up like proverbial bulls in china shops, Igor tries to apologize to Ani, but she rebuffs him at every turn. They finally locate Vanya at Headquarters, plastered drunk and getting a lap dance from the dreaded Diamond. Ani is enraged and crushed, and the scene devolves into an all-out fistfight, Igor watching with a growing sadness.

Vanya’s parents, the weary Nikolai and steely matriarch Galina (Daria Ekamasova), fly in from Russia to take care of another one of Vanya’s messes, only to find out that the marriage took place in Nevada. As the whole circus boards the Zakharov’s private plane to fly to Vegas, Ani makes her final plea, begging Vanya to stand up to his parents and tell them that he won’t divorce her because they are in love.

All Is Lost

In disbelief at her naïveté, Vanya tells Ani of course he’s going to divorce her. But hey, thanks for making his last trip to America fun.

Dark Night of the Soul

Ani repeats “fun?!”

Every single element of this moment is devastating: she is unloved, unwanted, and apparently the trashy butt of a cosmic joke that somehow—despite all her street smarts—she didn’t see coming. Ani’s humiliation is complete and even worse, takes place in front of Igor, who watches her with pity.

Break into Three

Galina barks one of her usual orders, insisting that Ani get on the plane, but Ani stiffens her spine and stands her ground, refusing to board.

Finale

There is no team to gather because Ani is—and likely always will be—alone, but she executes the plan anyway, telling Galina that since there’s no prenup, she’s going to get a lawyer and sue the family for half their fortune. It’s only after Galina threatens her family and friends that she relents.

In Vegas, Ani no longer has the energy to dig down deep. She signs the divorce papers and is about to leave quietly, but Igor surprises everyone by telling the Zakharovs that Ani deserves an apology. Galina, apoplectic at this audacious request, calls Ani a disgusting hooker, but Ani, reenergized by suddenly having at least one member of a team, strikes back, saying that Vanya hates his mother so much, he married a hooker just to piss her off. As Nikolai dissolves in laughter, Ani marches out in defiance.

Which doesn’t last, of course. Back in New York, Ani moves around in a stunned daze as she spends her last night in the mansion she’d thought was going to be her home and goes with Igor to the bank to pick up what Toros called her “green card fee.” When they reach her dumpy little Brighton Beach apartment, Igor has another surprise and it’s a high-tower one: he hands Ani her engagement ring, which he stole back from Toros.

Ani does not have any way to emotionally process this act of kindness; there has never been a man in her life that did not want something in return for a “payment.” So she reverts to what she knows best, climbing on top of the startled Igor for a little gratitude poke. But when he tries to kiss her, all the rage and pain boil over and Ani falls apart.

Final Image

The Opening Image gave us a cinematic view of sex work, a blasé performance that engages the body and not the soul. The Final Image of Ani sobbing hysterically in Igor’s arms is a complete contrast, as body and soul slam together in a tragic synthesis with no background music to soften the blow.