Starlet

A film set in the San Fernando Valley in California. Jane is twenty-one. She lives with two housemates and has a small dog. What she does for work is not said for a while. Then it becomes clear: she works in adult films. She buys a thermos at a yard sale. It costs a dollar. She brings it home and looks inside. There is money in it; tens of thousands of dollars, in rolls. She tells no one. She goes to find the woman who sold it. Sadie is in her eighties, lives alone, and speaks to nobody. Jane does not give the money back. Instead she tries to become the woman's friend. From there the film is a story of approach. They go to the supermarket, they play bingo, they go to a cemetery. Sadie does not like her. She is rude for a long time and does not say why. Jane never puts her guilt into words. The narrative does not speak for her either. What the narrative is interested in is not money but loneliness: its idea is that both women live a life they cannot tell anyone about, and that this is why they fit each other. The housemate line carries a separate tension. Melissa is unstable and it steadily worsens. The work scenes are shown and the narrative neither condemns nor sanctifies them; work stands as work. At the end we learn something about Sadie and where the money came from acquires meaning. Sean Baker's method is plain: real locations, natural light, and non-professional actors. Besedka Johnson, who plays Sadie, had never acted and was in her eighties; she won a special jury prize at Locarno for the part and died not long after the film. Dree Hemingway, Besedka Johnson, Stella Maeve and James Ransone are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes American independent cinema and slow films about a relationship. Who it is not for: anyone expecting incident; the narrative is made almost entirely of daily detail.