What happens to Cinderella after she marries the prince? As a child, I was obsessed with this question. Where were they going, I wondered, and what would they do when they got there?
But as in any fairy tale, things are not what they seem. Let the readers of this Catholic magazine understand that this R-rated film about a sex worker features exactly as much sex and nudity as you would expect. And maybe she does: A former student of mine, once a teenage runaway, told me that working as a stripper gave her great confidence.
The sequence ends with Ani taking the train home in the wee hours, wearing an enormous black coat and no makeup, her now-stringy hair escaping from a beanie. Later, she sits in the shadow of an elevated train track, smoking a cigarette alone. While Ani dances for them, her customers tell her about their jobs, their anxieties, even their families. Until Ivan Mark Eydelshteyn.
He is also a customer, but their relationship is different from the start. They meet because he requests a dancer who speaks his native Russian he, too, is looking for connection. At first, Ani refuses to speak Russian, saying she would happily listen to him instead yet another one-sided relationship , but soon Ivan charms her into conversation. That spark only grows as the movie progresses. In a series of escalations, Ivan asks Ani for more and more, and she gives it to him willingly: visiting his enormous house, accepting an invitation to his party, agreeing to be exclusive with him for a week.
Even when Ivan plays video games on the couch, Ani is content to snuggle peacefully into his chest, possibly falling in love. And who can blame her? Ivan is young and handsome and lives in a house the size of a Costcoβand, for the most part, he treats her well. For a moment, it certainly looks that way.
