Anora Doesn't Eat

Femininity, womanhood, sexualization, yes, I hear you, I understand, but let’s get down to brass tacks. Anora doesn’t eat.

Here’s a thought that hit me like a freight train the other morning: Anora doesn’t eat.

I mean, yes, there are scenes where she sort of puts things in her mouth and chews — notably her gum, one of her constant accessories, which I assume she’s either swallowing or spitting out when she’s finished. But it is, by the very nature of gum, not meant to be eaten.

Before she meets Vanya, Anora has her routine. She goes to work. She dances. She walks the floor looking for customers. She takes her break to eat. She smokes. She goes home. She sleeps. She forgets to buy milk. She fights with her sister.

It happens, quite literally, in the first five minutes of the film. I found a bootleg version on the internet with sketchy pop ups to confirm. When Vanya comes into the club asking for someone who speaks Russian, Anora is forced to interrupt her meal break to go work. When her boss comes looking for her, she complains to him about the shitty DJ — the boss’s cousin — who was “very rude and dismissive” when she provided him with a playlist of preferred music for the girls. She gestures with a fork in her hand, a Tupperware brought from home nestled in her lap. So, two things: 1) we can add meal prep — or at least keeping leftovers — to Anora’s daily routine, and 2) we do not see her eat or demand to be fed for the rest of the movie. Not until she demands drugs from Igor in the diner.

Could this be an unnecessary detail, like how we’re not supposed to see women getting their periods in fantasy movies or something? Maybe, I guess. But doesn’t it feel symbolic? Vanya interrupts her meal, and she goes hungry for the rest of the film. And, I do want to side note: how much do male filmmakers care about feeding their female protagonists? Did Sean Baker even notice that he didn’t feed Anora? I like to think that artists think about these details, but it’s something to chew on.

Anora kind of always has something in her mouth – gum, vape, cigarette, blunt — and she’s also always talking. One of the more recognizable frames in the film sees Ani gagged with the red scarf to keep her from screaming. Yes, I see the metaphor too: her voice is her power and it was taken from her, etc. But no one in this movie spoke at a normal volume. And even the way language and the act of speaking is used speaks to the American immigrant experience, even though she is second/third generation. Her grandmother spoke Russian, so she understands the language but prefers to respond in English because her Russian is "terrible.”

Anyway, here’s what Anora does eat, because Ivan obviously doesn’t feed her. He is interested in Anora more as a pet he can fuck rather than a human woman who, like, needs to live, but I wouldn’t trust this kid to take care of an actual animal, so what else can we expect. To be fair, they do go into the candy store, and she eats candy – but candy isn’t dinner. The class divisions are clear – Concussion Man even comments on it, rich people and the kitchens they don’t use: “Rich people don’t have ice?” Certainly not, but they do have a frozen bag of clams for no reason.

One of my favorite food scenes in any movie happens in Big Night (1996), starring Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub as two Italian brothers who open a restaurant in Connecticut. They have one night to host an elaborate dinner to either save their business and their livelihoods, or admit defeat and go back to Italy.

An entire movie is spent talking about, preparing, cooking, and serving food — but never do the brothers eat their own food. Not until the end when (spoilers) after the so-called big night proves successful, and of course, after they’ve had the big, blow-up fight that would end most friendships (but can’t end theirs, because their brothers, after all) do they finally eat. (Please see Chris Fleming’s “Brothers” bit for further research into this phenomenon.)

This is their after-service meal, but it’s not the elaborate dinner they just prepared for their guests. Tucci’s character makes a frittata for himself and the busboy. He saves a third of it. Shalhoub walks in and Tucci stands up, gets him a plate. The five-minute scene is mostly silent. Eggs, bread, butter. Easy, simple, fast. They tear bread from the loaf with their hands. They eat in silence. But — they eat.

Now we arrive at Anora’s diner scene. Let’s set it up: Toros is obviously screaming at everyone, Concussion Man is suffering, and Igor is shoving a burger into his mouth. Anora, meanwhile, nibbles on french fries.

When she demands a pill, Igor won’t give it to her. (He’s not a drug dealer, and they’re his grandmother’s drugs.) He stuffs the burger further and further into his mouth, almost to a comic, ridiculous, absurd degree. Ani mostly eats fries, takes small bites of her burger. Igor takes care of her in small (and big) ways throughout the movie, but I liked this — it was almost like he was mirroring what he wanted her to do without outright telling her to eat. Anora clearly does not like being told no, and I also focus on french fries when I don’t want to eat anything substantial, so who are you fooling — but at some point she puts down the fries and picks up the rest of her burger.

And, you know what, to confirm my suspicions that Sean Baker wasn’t thinking about this at all, he confirmed in an interview with Screen Daily that Igor’s actor, Yuriy Borisov, improvised his burger scene. (“Later, in the diner, when he’s shoving hamburger in his mouth during that whole scene, that was his idea.”)

I loved Mikey Madison shouting, HE’S AT FUCKIN’ HEADQUARTERS! in her Brooklyn accent around a mouthful of food. It scratched an itch in my brain. I’ve been waiting for you to eat, girl. And it’s so right that just as she’s settling into eat for real, they’re up again, chasing after Ivan. We don’t even see her swallow. Igor, on the other hand, understands that they have to eat NOW, because who knows when they’ll stop again. The metaphor is obvious — the rich literally taking food from the mouths of the poor, but trying to convince us we’re being fed.

And so, in the end, Anora returns home to a fridge with no milk. And so she tries to take something for herself. And so she won’t be kissed. And so she cries.