Anora

I don't quite know how to rate it. On one side it's an exhilarating movie, in three acts: Anora's Cinderella dream; the "After Hours" hunt in a NYC night; the fall of the illusions. The pace and the editing are great, the movie switch from funny to suspense, Mikey Madison is great. But I felt unsatisfied in the way the plot progresses, it couldn't keep my suspense of disbelief, and Anora character study is damaged by it, only partially saved by a powerful, pivotal final scene.

Like "Uncut Gems", a lot of bi-dimensional characters in a fast paced plot doesn't make for a deep movie. This is better and deeper than Uncut Gems in many ways, but suffers the limitations of that cinematic style.

SPOILERS AHEAD
Maybe it's just that I wanted her to act differently, but the only true character development — from a girl that thinks everything as a transaction, that uses sex as a way to say "thank you" — it's in the final ten minutes. The second act — while funny — drags us around in a promise of a conflict that is unfulfilled. The way Anora, despite her transactional ethic, just gives up to charge the armenians for kidnapping or doesn't ask for a better bargain to sign the papers doesn't sit well with me. She has nothing to lose. I know, she fears Ivan's mother threats, and it's probably in her character to react that way: it's just a girl under the metaphorical though skin (while her real skin is sensitive, as Igor notes). Besides, keeping us 20 minutes in a courtroom wasn't exactly what the movie wanted. But this conflict it's solved too much quickly and conveniently, too much in the movie felt instrumental to forcefully move the plot along a precise direction, and the movie forgets to care about the characters in the process.