i saw this a couple years ago and liked it as well. Hemingway is really excellent here. i don't know what she's done since but she should have no shortage for work based on this. I agree that the script for Starlet reads like a bad sitcom episode full of unlikely situations and even more unlikely relationships but it's casting, supporting performances and direction are so assured that every potential derailment goes by the wayside.domino harvey wrote:The logline for Starlet makes it sound like a movie you'd never want to actually sit through: flighty young woman befriends crotchety old woman. Blech, must be either feel-good garbage or some kind of culture clash nonsense, right? Except not really. It is however one of the very best films of recent years, and an exemplar of the kind of movie countless indies in the last decade have tried and failed to be: the small film done well. The success of Starlet is in how it completely trusts its audience to gradually attune itself to its level, which is mostly pitched to the tune of its central character of Jane, as played in a shoulda been star-making turn by Dree Hemingway. The film follows Hemingway's Jane through day-to-day minutiae and things start to become clearer and funnier as the film's sense of humor and measured information begin to color everything on-screen. And boy is it often funny. There is a fifteen minute block in this film that is as laugh out loud hilarious as anything I've ever seen concerning Jane's initial attempts to connect with the elderly Sadie, wherein the awkward small talk and facial expressions add up to extended segments of sustained laughter at every line and tic before finally culminating in an explosive direct confrontation. The laughs don't come from the sitcom hackery the basic premise promises but somewhere more real and both unexpected and yet immediately true to the situation, and as the film continues and turns somewhat more serious, the trust in the material and the performers to rise above the potential pitfalls is established and rewarded with great warmth of feeling. Starlet is a film built on trust (going both ways to and from the audience), but also on elisions, specifically a significant character detail withheld from the audience by the film for at least half the running time-- not because everything hinges on a surprise or twist, but because the film knows this information could cloud how the character is read if it's revealed too soon (I am, as ever, thankful that I either never read a review or saw a trailer, or forgot the relevant details if I did) and once it's learned organically, it is readily accepted as part of the package deal already bought into.
This is a beautiful-looking (and a special "Thank God" goes out to Music Box for having the faith to put a tiny indie like this out on Blu-ray) and smartly made film, but above all Starlet is a character piece. And helpfully it's hinged on one of the best performances of recent memory (and maybe ever, if I'm being honest) courtesy of Dree Hemingway, who embodies Jane in a way that is so natural and lived-in that it does not compute how she failed to gain any kind of traction as a result of her work here. Admittedly I may be biased since I've intimately known characters like Jane and yet rarely if ever see them represented in modern film in an honest way, but I consider that a vouchsafe if anything. Hemingway's perf, like the film, inspires earned effusiveness. See this film.
Spoiler
Also for a film about a young girl working in the porn industry and featuring some explicit scenes it never feels morally superior or exploitative/judgmental towards its characters in the slightest.
