longs Final spoilers follow.

After the dizzying Cinderella story of longs‘s The first half goes awry with the madcap comedy of the second, the film’s quietly dark ending seemingly coming out of nowhere. But in a film that takes every opportunity to subvert expectations, the emotional final note seems like the only ending that could make sense.

longs sees sex worker Ani (Mikey Madison) meet her future husband Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) one night working at a strip club in Brighton Beach. Son of a shady Russian oligarch, Vanya spends his days in luxury outside, with his father’s money, with alcohol and Obligations.

The couple initially enters into a pretty womanA bargain in the style of spending the week together, which leads to a quick trip to the altar during a party in Las Vegas. Once Vanya’s family finds out about the marriage, Toros (played by long-time Baker collaborator Karren Karagulian) and his muscles tense and the fairy tale collapses into a Cronenberg farce. Eastern Promises.

Among the foolish henchmen who descend on the mansion of Vanya’s man-child is Igor (Yura Borisov, whose director Sean Baker described as “Russia’s Ryan Gosling”), a shy Kronk-like figure who begins to fall for Ani while violently stopping her.

Before the idea of ​​a stripper kidnapped by a rich, dumb kid came to mind, Baker thought his next movie would be a Russian gangster movie. Those initial seeds take shape with Vanya’s Three Stooges handlers.

We’re prepared for a certain amount of violence coming from organized crime movies involving Russians, so once they ramp up, there’s an expectation. longs will take a darker turn. At this point, Vanya, who has disarmed herself, runs off, pulling up her pants, leaving Ani to fight Igor and Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan), causing intense damage to the latter’s nasal passage.

But even though the scene gets bigger and bigger, nothing significantly terrible happens: there’s a less well-done version of this that ends with Ani dead. Instead, his incompetence is reassuring and paves the way for another surprising twist in the story.

As they cruise the Coney Island boardwalk in search of Vanya’s jet-black aviators, Igor’s meaningful glances at Ani hint that another romance is brewing.

When Igor shows Ani that he got her engagement ring back, surrounded by a New York snowstorm and soundtracked by his grandmother’s screeching windshield wipers, they already have a shared understanding. They both live at the whims of the rich.

Ani then initiates sexual relations with Igor, but when he pulls her in to kiss her, her tough-spirited shell breaks and she collapses into tears. It’s as if the weight of the last few hellish days fell on me all at once.

There is both transactional and non-transactional sex in the film: this final scene draws the line between the two, as Igor seems to want the former, while Ani the latter.

However, the moment is also not crucially linked to Ani’s sex work, something Baker has put destigmatizing at the center of his films. The early strip club scenes are injected with a sense of Take That-soundtracked fun, rather than their tired depiction as seedy, degrading venues.

In that environment, Ani is smart. But when she leaves headquarters, she shares her dreams of a honeymoon at Disneyland and truly believes she has found a way out.

The arrival of Vanya’s terrifying mother (still with laces on her apron) contributes to the understanding of a system that is stacked against the working class. It’s not the first film to point out America’s misnomer as the “Land of Opportunity,” but it does so with a winning quality and empathy for the class positions of its minions and sex workers alike.

The reality of Ani’s dashed hopes finally arrives, when financial opportunity fades and her control performance collapses.

One more time longs It defies expectations, refusing to give the cheap touch of a triumphant final note. In another movie, Ani could have gotten the guy or beaten the Russian money, as she briefly tells Vanya’s mother she might be able to do.

For a movie that keeps you guessing, it’s a fitting conclusion. The moment is so open Baker wrote an epilogue only for the eyes of the actors. But would we really want the easy answer of what comes next?

Instead, after two hours of propulsive momentum, the fact of this melancholic and somewhat disappointing coda gives us an idea of ​​Ani’s own feelings at seeing such monumental hopes dashed.

longs is now available in US and UK cinemas.

Deputy Television Editor

Formerly a television reporter at The mirrorRebecca can now be found producing expert analyzes of the television landscape for digital spywhen he’s not speaking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the last season of Bridgerton either The white lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various love island villas.

When she’s not enjoying a box set, Rebecca’s sightings in the wild have included stints on the red carpets at the National Television Awards and BAFTAs, and post-game explainer videos on the reality shows we’re all watching.