Starlet (2012)
Directed by Sean Baker
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.
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What critics compared Starlet to
Baker and frequent collaborator Chris Bergoch (Starlet, Tangerine) have composed an observational scenario that allows life to just sort of happen.
His movies Starlet (2012) and Tangerine (2015) were made for next-to-no money (the latter was shot entirely on an iPhone) and starred first-time actors; both are among the best offerings of their respective years.
Like Mr. Baker’s earlier features “Starlet” and “Tangerine,” this movie insists on meeting people on both sides of the screen where they are, on suspending judgment and extending compassion without abandoning its ethical grounding.
Baker’s oeuvre has found many variations on the theme of survival in lower-class America: From the hustling Chinese deliveryman of “Take Out,” to the aggressive street salesman in “Prince of Broadway” and the porn star in “Starlet,” his characters are defiant, rousing figures no matter the limitations imposed on them.
Starlet (2012) focuses on the friendship between an adult film actor and her elderly neighbor in the San Fernando Valley, and 2015's Tangerine, Baker's biggest breakout so far, follows two trans sex workers through a long day of dealing with johns and personal dramas on a block of Santa Monica Boulevard.
Writer-director Sean Baker (Starlet, Tangerine) takes a sympathetic look at a couple of motels in Orlando that serve as home for a variety of working-poor individuals.
Anora is far more a fairytale than any of its director Sean Baker’s past portraits of sex workers. Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket – at times, they can be a little sentimental, but they’re deeply and affectionately embedded in their respective worlds.
Films like Tangerine, Red Rocket and Starlet have set out to remove some of the stigma surrounding the line of work…
In Starlet (2012) and Tangerine (2015), for example, he draws indelible characters who sell access to their bodies while seeking meaningful connections elsewhere.
…(porn-stars in Starlet and Red Rocket, sex workers in Tangerine)…
Jane (Starlet)…
Micro-budget efforts like Take Out (2004) and Starlet (2012)…
Sean Baker’s masterful, vividly gritty follow-up to 2012’s “Starlet,” shot entirely with iPhones, is also a bold, intimate challenge to mild-mannered contemporary notions of independent filmmaking.
Writer-director Sean Baker (Starlet, Prince of Broadway) locates the viewer so squarely inside the characters' sad, constricted world that when Sin-Dee and her nemesis overlook their differences long enough to share a crack pipe in the ladies' room, they might as well be drinking egg nog at a holiday party.
Even more so when we factor in the notoriety of Baker's previous film, the bad-girl drama Starlet.
His previous “Prince of Broadway” and “Starlet” are movies about the kind of people you don’t usually see movies about.
Director Sean Baker, whose excellent 2012 film, “Starlet,” focused on the porn industry, turns his attention to transgender sex workers in this fresh, funny and acutely human comedy about a day in the life of some of Hollywood’s edgier residents.
Director Sean Baker (“Starlet,” “Prince of Broadway,” “Take Out”) was reportedly inspired to make “Tangerine,” a continuation of his interest in down-and-out New Yorkers and Angelenos, after observing the patrons of a donut shop in Hollywood’s red-light district.