Anora and Paying For It are very different kinds of sex worker movies

In the new limited podcast series from Commotion, TIFF in 12, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud chats with film critics Rad Simonpillai and Teri Hart about the latest news out of the Toronto International Film Festival. It's this week only, 12 minutes at a time.

In the first episode, the trio discuss two very different sex worker movies with a lot of buzz: Anora, and the Canadian production Paying For It. Listen to the episode or read the transcript below to hear about which of the two they're predicting to win TIFF's highest honour, the People's Choice Award. (Hint: it's the one that has already won the Palme d'Or.)

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: I think to me Anora is a heavyweight, or like one of the heavyweights for sure. It's the movie that won the Palme d'Or. It's a Sean Baker movie. It has all the award buzz that there is to be gotten heading into awards season. What's interesting about Sean Baker is that, like, he's someone who very consistently knows how to make movies that sort of feel like they have a voice, you know? And also awards really respond to Sean Baker movies. The Florida Project was a beloved awards season movie.

So he's got Anora, but then also this other movie which is Paying For It, directed by Canadian arts royalty Sook-Yin Lee, of course. An adaptation of a Chester Brown graphic novel — a graphic memoir — about paying for sex. Do you want to talk about those two movies? Because it's very rare for us to get two sex worker movies. I should also tell people Andrea Werhun, who has been on the show, is connected to both of them because she was a consultant on Anora, and also she is one of the stars of Paying For It. Rad, I'll kick it over to you. Two movies about sex work.

Rad: I loved Anora when I saw it at Cannes. I was blown away by it. For me, this is Sean Baker returning to some of that Tangerine energy. Like, I didn't think he had grasped that lightning again in some of his follow-up movies, but this was a return to that. And what I loved about Anora is, when we talk about sex worker stories, it's not the kind of story that dwells on trauma or anything. It's about a sex worker who gets married and then unleashes chaos; it turns into a sort of Uncut Gems anxiety thriller. But what I love especially about it is that it reminded me of Preston Sturges' screwball rom-coms: like, it is deeply hilarious, deeply joyous, before it takes a tragic turn. He really did kind of grasp my love for the old kind of rom-com in this narrative. It's one of the best movies of the year, period. I was definitely my favourite out of Cannes. It remains one of my favourites. I don't know if there's ever been a movie that won the Palme d'Or and then the TIFF's People's Choice Award, and I feel like Anora could be that one.

But then now when we talk about comparisons, I had more complicated feelings about Paying For It. It's interesting that both of these are movies about sex work, and both of these are about where sex workers end up marrying their clients or get into a relationship with their clients. But Anora is told from the perspective of the sex worker, whereas Paying For It is adapting Chester Brown's comic book, and that's largely told from his perspective. The narrative begins when he broke up with his partner, Sook-Yin Lee, who actually directs this film. In the comic strip, there's a lot of debate about legalization when it comes to sex work and sex worker rights and safety. I didn't feel that really translated very well into the movie. And what I felt about this movie is that the sex workers' presence was largely in service to the emotional hang-ups and sexual hang-ups of the characters that are meant to be Chester Brown and Sook-Yin Lee. So it felt like it was their story, and the sex workers were there to service their story.

Elamin: Which is quite a contrast to the way that people are talking about Anora, which feels very rooted in how sex workers actually talk about doing sex work. Teri, I'm interested in the idea that Rad just laid out — the idea that Anora could be the first movie to win both the Palme d'Or and the People's Choice Award at TIFF, because the People's Choice [is] the big award that comes out of the Toronto International Film Festival. It's determined next Sunday. We are talking a few hours before the last public screening that there is of Anora. What's your vibe as you think about these two movies and the way that they're being framed right now?

Teri: I think that Anora is the one to beat. I think it's Anora's to lose, and deservedly so. I mean, this is a spectacular movie. I completely agree with Rad in terms of Pretty Woman meets Uncut Gems. There's also a signature scene in Anora that I cannot get out of my mind that Mikey Madison, who is the star of this, who people might recognize from a show called Better Things that she was in, playing one of the daughters. But she is relentless in this scene, and Sean Baker allows her to really go for everything that that character that she is playing, Annie, Anora — what she stands for, which is integrity, which is herself, which is not backing down.

And I think that when we're comparing or talking about two movies that have sex workers at the center of them, I think it's really important to parse out the different stories that these two movies are trying to tell. And although they have sex workers at the center of them, they really have a very different emotional trajectory. I mean, Anora is about what Sean Baker is interested in, which is the disparity of power in the world: who gets it, how do they use it, and who do they use it against and for. And Paying For It isn't about power. Paying For It, in my estimation, is a time capsule of a time with two people who were making a decision to live a relationship in a way that I think people are doing more and more in 2024 — an unconventional way. And these two people were ahead of their time. That's what I love about Paying For It. It did work for me, I think, more than it worked for Rad, but although sex workers are kind of at the center of that, they're telling two different things. They're talking about two different emotional trajectories, where that is involved in these people's lives. And so I think it's a little bit unfair to draw any kind of correlation between the two, although the center of them involves a character, or multiple characters in Paying For It, that are sex workers.

Rad: Another kind of contrast is, one thing when I watch Anora, I feel elements from Andrea Werhun's book — you mentioned that Andrea consulted on Anora.

Elamin: She wrote a book called Modern Whore. Sean Baker is executive producing her adaptation of that book.

Rad: And so when I first watched Anora, I was like, oh, I recognize all of these scenes, so to speak, from Andrea's book, in terms of the milieu. The point where Paying For It really threw me is, there's this trope in there when the character that's meant to represent Chester Brown arrives for an appointment and surprise, it's not who we thought it was. It was a trans woman. I thought that was such a dangerous trope, and I was kind of surprised to see that in this kind of movie. So that's the kind of stuff where I'm like, I can't recover from those kinds of moments.

Terri: Sure. That's a dangerous trope. I agree with you, but I think it's actually truthful. I think that does happen in this world, and I don't think we can shy away in movies from what, you know, trans women experience who are sex workers. I think showing that and showing the cruelty around that and how wrong that is, is part of what—

Rad: Except if was played for a joke. It was meant to be comical. That was what bothered me.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

For more from Teri, Rad and Elamin on #TIFF24, check out our podcast-exclusive episodes called TIFF in 12, dropping every day from September 9-13 about all the festival happenings you might have missed.

Panel produced by Danielle Grogan.