Starlet (2012) Reviews

• Starlet, starbright

  StevePulaski2013-05-15

  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.

• Great character study of two very different women

  Boris_Day2013-05-12

  Starlet is a character study very much in the spirit of films from the 70s. I think the director was influenced by the likes of Hal Ashby and Paul Mazursky. A young, slightly aimless woman who has just moved San Fernando Valley, buys a vintage thermos flask at a yard sale from a cranky old lady and discovers $10.000 inside. After making a half-hearted attempt to give it back, she keeps the money, but then feels guilty and tries to befriend the old woman, who remains guarded to the point of hostility at the prospect of having her life disrupted. The film doesn't ever resort to cosy indie movie clichés about the old passing on their wisdom the the young and life lessons being learned. It also doesn't exploit the young woman's line of business for cheap melodrama, as lesser films would. Both lead performances are wonderful and a cute dog always helps. The film looks and sounds gorgeous and the director has a knack for what to show us and what to leave out. It's another good case for digital film-making. Talented independent film makers can now make great looking films for peanuts, which is just as well considering Hollywood has almost completely given up on making films for adults. BTW. the trailer makes this look like another anodyne "heart warming" indie, full of laughter and whimsy, when really it's a much more melancholy, ambivalent and subtle film.

• Unique and lovely

  billyweeds-12012-11-25

  "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.

• A truly enjoyable, complex and heartwarming film

  jij981112013-05-21

  I will start with the unnecessary (but not necessarily negative) interjection of the adult film industry theme into this film which I feel detracts somewhat from the ultimate story. It is not that adult film performers don't have normal emotions but it just seems distracting from the ultimate story, which is simply the emotional bond that forms between a young woman with an aimless lifestyle and good heart who confronts her own guilt about a wrong she commits against an old woman by undertaking her version of atonement for that wrong. The plot is deceptively simple, a young woman discovers $10,000 hidden in a thermos flask she buys in a yard sale from an old woman. She then confronts the moral dilemma and guilt of keeping the money and ultimately decides, after hearing that the old woman she bought the thermos from does not need the money, to spend the money primarily on making the old woman happy and seeks out the old woman's companionship. This premise, and the skillful mining of that premise, is expertly accomplished by the talented cast and director. One or two commenters say the theme has been done before. But what theme or plot has not been done before? It is the trip itself that is the reward and the viewer is treated to good acting, crisp and insightful scripting,and a wonderful ride. Another commenter thought the ending was abrupt and uncertain. It was anything but. The old woman at the end after learning of the money, in a masterful and understated ending showed her forgiveness for the young woman's guilty errors and heartfelt atonement, and showed her closeness and feelings for the young woman by indirectly disclosing her deepest personal secret through the simple act of asking flowers to be placed on a grave. I have to think hard to come up with a more masterful ending to a movie then the subtle ending of this low-key immensely entertaining indie film. Highly recommended.

• Heartfelt, heartrending and poignant as all-get out with enough sentiment, humor and plain honesty rarely seen in film today. A true gem sleeper.

  george.schmidt2012-11-18

  STARLET (2012) **** Dree Hemingway, Besedka Johnson, James Ransone, Stella Maeve. Remarkable big-screen debut for filmmaker Sean Baker and his incredible star, Hemingway (Mariel's daughter) as a blissfully unaware young up-and-coming porn star in sun-baked Cali who strikes up an unlikely friendship with an elderly woman (equally amazing 'newcomer' Johnson) after purchasing at a yard sale turns out a cache of hidden money instilling a sense of guilt - and for her first time - responsibility enacting her to get close to the off-putting octogenarian. With almost an improvisatory pseudo-docu/verite style thanks to Baker's collaboration on an original screenplay with Chris Bergoch, the film slowly deepens its main characters with enough empathy and also cringe-worthy moments of anomie (namely the impressively nasty Maeve as Hemingway's skeezy roomie). Heartfelt, heartrending and poignant as all-get out with enough sentiment, humor and plain honesty rarely seen in film today. A true gem sleeper. Kudos to the adorable Chihuahua pup pet of Hemingway's :D