Starlet

Writer-director Sean Baker is best known for his naturalistic portraits of people in unglamorous circumstances, and he brings that same style to depict a random friendship made across generations in Starlet. It’s equally refreshing as his other work. Rather than painting 22-year-old Jane’s life as an adult film star with sensationalist drama, Starlet paints her life as somewhat boring, a series of mundane inconveniences that is only broken up by a yard sale held by 85-year-old Sadie. It’s odd, since it’s usually depicted the other way. However, the oddness highlights how this spontaneous connection has shifted something in the both of them, and how it’s worth opening up to, even despite the difference in the worlds they both live in.

An unlikely friendship forms between 21 year-old Jane and the elderly Sadie after Jane discovers a hidden stash of money inside an object at Sadie's yard sale.