Sean Baker’s independent feature Starlet, continuing this week at the Music Box, is constructed around an ingenious plot twist that transforms the movie from a precious character study into something significantly darker. I can’t discuss the movie in any depth without giving the twist away (you might not want to read this until after you’ve seen the movie), and this dilemma points to my frustration with the film. Baker is a confident storyteller and his players (who range from professionals to first-time actors) turn in good, soulful work. Yet the central surprise so overwhelms the rest of the movie that it distracts from these virtues—or, worse yet, reduces them to window dressing.
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The movie begins as an uneventful drama about familiar lower-middle-class types. Jane (Dree Hemingway) is a sweet but dippy 18-year-old living in a Los Angeles townhome with her friend Melissa (Stella Maeve) and Melissa’s older boyfriend, Mikey (James Ransone). Baker shows the three smoking pot and playing video games in their underwear, and sometimes arguing about money; apparently none of them holds down a job. They recall the overgrown children of Larry Clark’s Bully or Ken Park, and like his characters, they seem innocent even though their behavior is aimless and hedonistic. When Jane and Melissa get stoned, they cuddle like sisters and engage in soul-searching conversations they’re too inarticulate to complete; Mikey, a big-talking drug dealer, suggests an excitable boy, particularly when he’s playing video games.
This revelation marks the movie’s most impressive sequence, an extended scene in real time as Melissa makes her galvanic appearance at the office. In one fell swoop the scene vividly shows how the porn outfit operates, introduces several new characters, and reveals that, no matter how alike Jane and Melissa seemed in their early scenes, Melissa is far less mature (she even forgets to show up for her video shoots). Until this point, moments of unexpected behavior have raised vague questions about the characters (Mikey controls all of Melissa’s financial decisions; Jane goes to the hospital for a blood test), but the plot twist pulls them into focus. The scene is all the more powerful for seeming to come out of nowhere.
Unfortunately Baker can’t seem to let these observations speak for themselves. The second half of Starlet contains several more plot twists, as if Baker just can’t stop. A scene at a porn expo reveals that Jane, contrary to her go-with-the-flow personality, is quite levelheaded in her professional decisions. In another scene Mikey surprises his roommates by transforming their living room into a mock strip club, so the girls can practice their pole-dancing (Melissa has mentioned earlier that he’s been saving up money, but she doesn’t know why.) The final shot suggests that Sadie has a secret life too. All these moments are dramatically effective in context, yet in hindsight they feel arbitrary because Baker could have presented them earlier. It’s all too fitting that a movie about pornography should leave the viewer feeling used.
Directed by Sean Baker
