Spoilers ahead.
Anora ends in a raw sort of stillness, a wound cleaned but not closed. Snow flutters around the titular protagonist and Igor, the henchman paid to detain her; they sit in the front seat of his car and attempt something like intimacy, their silence disrupted only by the beat of Igor’s windshield wipers. This syncopation stands in stark contrast to the beginning of Sean Baker’s film, wherein Mikey Madison’s Anora—otherwise known as “Ani”—bends confidently to the rhythms of her job as a dancer and sex worker in a Manhattan gentleman’s club. When we first meet Ani amidst those neon lights, her power is transfixing. She commands a room, a stage, a client’s lap. But by the time the screen cuts to black, the crash and burn of her fairy-tale romp has revealed the extent to which she’s disregarded—and the extent to which she yearns for real, lasting respect.
Madison, whom I interviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival for ELLE’s Women in Hollywood issue, says she “totally tortured myself” over filming the ending sequence, as she saw it as “the most important scene in the film.” Whenever she’d flip ahead in her script and see the scene written out, Madison would get a “pit in my stomach.” But she needn’t have fretted: The single tear that slides down the actress’s face as Baker’s camera frames her farewell is gut-wrenching movie magic. When at last Madison got to watch the scene on a screen, “I was very moved by it,” she says. She “felt that everything that I was going through, and that the character [was going through], was combined in that moment.”
But due to the purposefully open-ended nature of that final scene, Madison’s heard a wide variety of reactions from audience members. “I feel like everyone, when they watch the film, could have a certain explanation as to what [Ani] wants or how she feels or what she does at the end,” she says. “It’s really interesting to hear other people’s perspectives, because I often feel it’s a reflection of them…It’s a reflection of, kind of, who you are.”
Anora’s final moments seem to stretch on for hours, each second a loaded one. Igor (Yura Borisov), who has increasingly softened to Ani throughout each hour of her captivity and eventual annulment, prepares to drop her off outside her Brighton Beach home—a long way from the mansion she shared (for a short time) with her now-former husband, the Russian oligarch’s son Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn). As something of a parting gift, Igor returns Ani’s engagement ring to her, after having witnessed Vanya’s parents snatch it from her. Ani responds to this gesture by climbing into Igor’s lap and initiating sex. He leans in to kiss her; she jerks back. He attempts to pull her closer. She fights this breach of her control, beating her fists against his chest until she collapses into his embrace, her shouts breaking into sobs.
It’s an ending that invites questions: Was this intimacy just another transaction? Was it consensual? Are they falling in love? Is Ani in control, or is she abused? Could Igor and Ani ever have a healthy relationship when their beginning was so fraught? Are we meant to exit the theater feeling hopeful or obliterated? Why not both?
“Men and women have very different reactions [to the ending],” Madison told me. “I remember there was this one man—I personally think this was kind of a disgusting perspective—but he said something like, ‘Oh, so your character is trying to get pregnant so that she can go back to Ivan and claim some of his money.’ I was thinking about it, and I was like, ‘Wow, that’s really a reflection of how he views the character and his perception of, maybe, just women in general.’ It was really eye-opening for me.”
She continued, “Some men, I think, have a more compassionate response or feeling about the ending. But I often feel that women are the most compassionate or thoughtful, in regards to what [Ani’s] going through emotionally in the end.”
As for her own interpretation of the ending, Madison is keeping that to herself. She doesn’t want to impact what others see in Ani’s experience—even if she, as the actress, might disagree with their take. “I have my own specific feelings about it and what she wants,” she says. “There’s a lot of hope involved, a lot of fighting for what she believes is hers…I hope that people love and that they feel some empathy for her. I want people to feel—whatever feeling it is—that they feel it strongly.”
Lauren Puckett-Pope is a staff culture writer at ELLE, where she primarily covers film, television and books. She was previously an associate editor at ELLE.