Brooklyn

In 1950s Ireland and New York, young Eilis Lacey has to choose between two men and two countries.

One of the most warmly received films of its year, Brooklyn works as both a richly textured immigrant story and an unusually interior romance, held together almost entirely by Saoirse Ronan's lead performance. Critics found it deceptively simple — familiar in form but precise and unsentimental in execution, more interested in how identity shifts than in melodrama. There is little dissent to speak of; the rare reservations are about modest ambition rather than failure.