Sean Baker’s movies see people for their humanity first and their circumstances second, an approach that has never been more clear than in Starlet.
When we first meet Jane (Dree Hemingway), she seems to be pleasantly adrift in Los Angeles, living in the extra room of a house belonging to a somewhat sketchy couple (Stella Maeve and James Ransone). Perusing yard sales in the neighborhood, Jane meets Sadie (Besedka Johnson), a standoffish older widow who eventually lets down her defenses enough that the two of them become unlikely friends. It isn’t until about 45 minutes in that we learn Jane is an up-and-coming star for a production company specializing in low-budget porn, something the rest of the film treats as a matter-of-fact element of her life.
As Jane, Hemingway has some nice moments of dippy sincerity, while Johnson—a novice—brings enough genuine irascibility to keep any hokiness at bay. (Sadie is the type of person who sighs after someone compliments her garden and impatiently offers, “Well, I’ve had it for 40 years.”) Aesthetically, Starlet represents a leap forward for Baker, who expands his palette to include an ambient score by Manual and sun-kissed cinematography by Radium Cheung (whose mobile-phone camerawork would define Baker’s next film, Tangerine).
Especially striking are the frequent electrical towers that dot the landscape, suggesting these lives are playing out far from Beverly Hills and somewhere closer to Orange County’s mechanical closet. And yet even this setting feels blessed by the Baker touch, in a way. In one scene, as Jane and Sadie sit at a dog park discussing Sadie’s love of Paris, darn it if the metal monstrosities looming over them don’t take on the majesty of a parade of Eiffel towers.
(2/23/2025)
