One of the best movies of the year is also the most surprising

This has been a great year for movies. But one of the best has surprised audiences with every showing. Sean Baker’s Cinderella story put Anora (Mikey Madison) in an impossible situation and she made us laugh and cry through the entire film.

Anora tells the story of a sex worker from Brooklyn who meets a young man named Vanya (Mark Eidelstein) who is visiting from Russia. He pays her to sleep with him and the two spend a week together before they decide to get married. While Anora thinks this is the fairytale she’s been waiting for, she quickly learns that Vanya isn’t the strong man she thought he was.

A lot of the film is centered around Anora stuck in a car with people who work for Vanya’s parents, going to find them. She fights with Igor (Yura Borisov) and calls him names and thinks that she is still going to end up in love with Vanya at the end of the day.

What made Anora so captivating to watch was Madison. She embodies this young woman who is so used to making others feel good that when she finds her own happiness, she wants to cling to it. Anora never feels shallow. She feels like a character who has had to fight for everything in her life, including what she thinks is love.

At first, you think that Anora’s story is one of greed or a woman trying to find money to leave her life behind. Vanya is that ticket out. But really, Anora thrives in Anora’s inability to really let herself understand love instead of accepting what she thinks is love from Vanya. Watching her stuck in a car, searching for a man who abandoned her, you really see the pain that takes over her.

Mikey Madison is perfection

A movie like this can feel gratuitous but Madison’s take on Anora brings a sadness to her. She doesn’t seem to hate her life as a dancer and sex worker but we watch as she is promised “more.” That hope takes over and she is genuinely happy for one moment with Vanya and it makes the third act that much more heartbreaking.

When Igor and Toros (Karren Karagulian) and Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) all force her to travel with them to find Vanya, we get to watch as she slowly loses hope that he really does love her. By the end of the movie, she is alone and back where she started but an appreciation is born between Igor and Anora that leads to one of the more devastating final scenes in a film this year.

I feel like Baker’s take on a woman like Anora is really something special. She could have across as shallow or desperate but Madison brings us an Anora who is fully realized when we first meet her. We are just on a journey of self discovery with her and realizing her own worth. She is someone who doesn’t understand what love can be and Anora leaves us heartbroken but also hopeful that she can find it outside of the whirlwind of Vanya.

It is easily one of the best movies of this entire year and one that will stay with you.