Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Russell Abraham This movie is about relationships. Everything else is a framework to color in the lives of two lonely people who are a mere 60 years apart in age. The "deus ex machina" of finding a small fortune stuffed in an old thermos at a garage sale is just a device to bring these two people together. The San Fernando Valley is a very curious place where nothing seems nailed down and appearances can be more than deceiving. Porn stars live next door to orthodox Jews and octogenarians, all isolated in their own worlds and oblivious to their neighbors just feet away. Hemingway is isolated by her profession (porn star) unable to have a meaningful relationship and Johnson is isolated by her age and past losses that have caused her to withdraw to her quaint bungalow. Slowly and fitfully, a relationship between the two grows.The movie is well paced and well directed. The porn theme is handled creatively and tastefully. It is a full half way through the film that Hemingway's profession is revealed. I do have a problem with the every scene being overexposed by about 2/3 stops and seriously desaturated. It is a cinematographic technique that has its limits. There are a few continuity issues that should have been resolved in the editing process, but overall, this film is a poignant and sensitive view of life in L.A. in the 21st Century.
SnoopyStyle 21 year old porn actress Jane (Dree Hemingway) lives an empty life while getting high with her roommates, Melissa (Stella Maeve) and Mikey (James Ransone). Jane happens upon elderly loner Sadie (Besedka Johnson)'s yard sale which leads to a stash of cash and an unlikely friendship.Dree is a likable actress with model good looks. She is not seasoned but good enough to play the ingenue. The movie moves at an easy pace. It has a natural feel but does drag in places. Stand out supporting acting comes from Stella Maeve. What it truly needs is more sense of danger that ramps up and increases as the movie advances. It has great possibilities but gets resolved a little too quickly.
Steve Pulaski Twenty-one year old Jane (Dree Hemingway) is a porn actress simply trying to make ends meet in a cruel world, living with her two deadbeat roommates, one of them a fellow actress. After purchasing a vase from an older woman and finding over $10,000 inside, she decides that the least she could do is try and befriend the woman to provide some resemblance of joy and happiness in her life. I suppose friendship is the least you can offer someone after taking the money they didn't know they had.The woman is eighty-five year old Sadie (Besedka Johnson), who spends her days calmly and in a true state of loneliness, tending her garden and quietly playing bingo at a senior's center. Meeting each other is a generational shock for the both of them in a way that doesn't revolve around the expected political/social norm changes. Instead, the details are shown just by the way they communicate and adapt to their own lifestyles accordingly. Jane would much rather go out of her way to get something more than textbook happiness, while Sadie feels disturbing consistent flow is a personal sin she can not commit.Sean S. Baker's Starlet is a sweet, tender little story detailing a generation gap that I love to see explored. It's a film, too, that boldly shows a lifestyle in a way that isn't comical or condescending. While the adult film industry only makes up a small part of Starlet's overall focus, it nonetheless makes its view on the industry respectable and mature. The maturity of director Baker, even as he treads dangerously close to smug depiction, remains visible throughout making this a truly sentimental work.The film is carried by the gifted performances of Hemingway and Johnson, who strike up a valuable, potent chemistry when they're on-screen together. Hemingway's brash qualities and aware attitude contrast boldly with Johnson's reclusive, control-freak persona, making for a relationship that is erected from more than smiles and good-feelings.Baker adopts the style of filmmaking known simply as "cinéma vérité," a style that heavily emphasizes the brutally honest, naturalistic side of life in filmmaking. I mention it here because the texture and look of the film plays a big role in its likability. Visuals are often mild and possess a sunny disposition, the filmic atmosphere is accentuated beautifully through the use of lens flare and flushed-out colors, and the warmness comes off as not a put-on, but a comforting feature.There are moments in Starlet that hold deep, uncompromising emotional drama, mainly in the scenes at bingo, where a coldly detached Sadie is left staring at her bingo card as if she really cares what the odds are. There's emotional honesty in the scene because we can see she is not really happy and Jane knows it as well as the audience does at that point. The scene is beautifully captured and scored perfectly so as not to be too mawkish or too downplayed.Ultimately, Starlet ends the way we kind of expected and its presence is more significant than a footnote but not so much as a genre-piece or a game-changing masterwork. It's short, simple, but above all, an effective illustration of emotion and tone as a coming of age story and a slight meditation on age and its downsides. It provides warmth and heart in its material, but most importantly, an unmissable soul as it shows both generations in full bloom and the naive impulses they give off that often prevent entire personal connection.Starring: Dree Hemingway and Besedka Johnson. Directed by Sean S. Baker.
billyweeds-1 "Starlet" is an absolutely lovely, unique film which I recommend without reservation. Masterfully directed by Sean ("Greg the Bunny") Baker, it stars Dee Hemingway, the daughter of Mariel, who plays Jane, a rather aimless but very sweet, very young, very pretty Angeleno who drifts through her life with two somewhat repellent roommates and a cute male Chihuahua named Starlet. Things change when Jane buys an old thermos bottle at a yard sale and discovers ten grand hidden inside. The rest of the movie has to do with her relationship with Sadie, the old woman who held the yard sale (played by octogenarian Besedka Johnson, making her film debut!), and Jane pursuing her part-time job. I won't say more, because the journey is worth taking. Hemingway and Johnson are a fantastic team. Jane and Sadie are an odd couple as odd, unexpected, and ultimately moving as any I've ever seen. The film is unpredictable and eye-opening and funny and poignant. I loved it.
