In Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, the courtesan Violetta sacrifices her own happiness for the sake of her beloved’s family, immortalizing her love through virtuous surrender. Sean Baker’s new film, Anora, attempts a contemporary riff on this old archetype, once again placing a young woman enmeshed in transactional romance at the heart of a doomed liaison. Yet where Violetta’s story resonates with moral complexity and genuine pathos, Anora offers only hollow spectacle, populated by characters who seem neither able nor willing to transcend their basest impulses.

At the center of this inert morality play is Ani (Mikey Madison), whose brash accent and streetwise swagger harken to Marisa Tomei’s comic verve in My Cousin Vinny, though stripped of her character’s underlying warmth. Ani works as a stripper and escort, euphemistically termed “sex worker” by the film’s marketing, and her persona is meant to reflect a no-nonsense, working-class fortitude. Yet unlike Violetta’s layered complexity, Ani’s motivations rarely transcend the transactional. She comes across not as a fully realized protagonist but as a flat composite of coarse gestures and easy archetypes.