“Anora,” an American Fantasia

It’s something of a cliché that married men run off with strippers to escape the sexless banality of their domestic lives. Yet the fantasy can work both ways; a wealthy john can fulfill the dream of material comfort and health insurance. Both sides should know better than to get swept up by these illusions, but in Sean Baker’s hard-knock tragicomedies—most of which are about sex workers—they usually can’t help it: Dreaming is a survival mechanism. In Anora, Baker’s latest, a stripper briefly finds deliverance in the arms of a monied client, only to be denied and come tumbling down to earth.