Film
Advanced Style
- Light-hearted
- Slow-burning
Advanced Style profiles seven stylish New York women, aged 62 to 95, who refuse to disappear into invisibility. This is a love letter to independence, eccentricity, and the radical act of dressing exactly how you want. It's warm, joyful, and quietly subversive about aging, beauty, and who gets to take up space. For anyone tired of the single story about growing old.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you love portraits where the subject's own sense of self does the storytelling, the kind of warm, colorful character study that finds joy in clothes, opinions and everyday defiance.
Skip it if you want a documentary with a strong narrative engine, interviews that dig hard into the past, or a critical argument; this one mostly lets its subjects talk and dress up the screen.
What it asks of you: It runs about seventy-five minutes and moves at an easy, unhurried pace, asking you to settle in, look closely at the outfits, and enjoy the company more than chase a plot.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Iris2014
Profiles the legendary Iris Apfel at 93, her husband, and six decades of unbridled style. A masterclass in refusing to soften yourself for anyone's comfort. If Advanced Style made you curious, this goes deeper into one extraordinary life.
But Moves at the pace of a person in their nineties—contemplative, unhurried. Not everyone wants cinema this patient.
Grey Gardens1976
The ancestor of all character-driven documentaries. Two eccentric women in a decaying mansion, living entirely by their own rules. Bizarre, tragic, weirdly loving. Influenced every intimate portrait since.
But It's voyeuristic by design. Watching decline and mental unraveling in close detail makes some viewers deeply uncomfortable.
The Queen of Versailles2012
A billionaire couple's marriage and mansion become a portrait of excess and ego. Like Advanced Style, it's about how people choose to present themselves, but from the opposite end of the spectrum. Sharp, darkly funny, uncomfortably intimate.
But The couple's behavior becomes exhausting. The film never quite condemns them, which bothers some viewers.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Advanced Style
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Midnight Gospel2020
Both ask what it means to stay vital and present as time runs out. Both refuse mournfulness as the only response to age and death. Both find beauty in what the world wants to hide.
Animated series: a man in a robot suit travels through dying worlds having profound conversations with guests. Looks like absurdist comedy; it's actually about mortality, meaning, and human connection. The visual form lets it go deeper than any talking-head doc could.
But The animation is deliberately strange and the tone shifts radically between episodes. Heavy metaphysical content; not background-watch material.
More like this (5)
Kate Plays Christine2016
Actress Kate Lyn Sheil researches and inhabits a real suicide on film. It's formally strange and unsettling in a way that's unforgettable. Questions what documentary is and who has the right to tell someone's story.
But Difficult subject matter. Experimental form. Not a comfortable watch, and some feel it's exploitative despite its intentions.
Cameraperson2016
A documentary cinematographer examines thirty years of footage she shot around the world. Fragments of other people's stories, threads of a life. Feels like memory itself. Profound meditation on witness and bearing.
But No narrative arc. Just moments. If you need plot, this will feel like scraps.
Finding Kukan2016
Hunt for a Filipino filmmaker whose one feature vanished. Portrait of obsession, lost cinema, and a life nobody documented. The search becomes a love letter to an unknown artist.
But Requires patience with dead ends. The film itself is incomplete—that's the point, but it's not satisfying for everyone.
The Mole Agent2020
An eighty-year-old man is hired to pose as a resident in a nursing home to investigate abuse. Sounds like a thriller; it's actually a tender study of loneliness, connection, and the inner lives of the overlooked.
But The plot machinery is visible and occasionally heavy-handed. Some moments lean too far toward sentiment.
Love, Marilyn2013
Advanced Style is about women claiming visibility on their own terms. This is the shadow version: what happens when the world decides who you should be. The contrast illuminates both.
Documentary about Marilyn Monroe, but filtered through the voices of actresses reading her private letters and journals. Intimate, sad, angry. Shows her intelligence and wit alongside the machinery that consumed her. About visibility without agency.
But Partial reconstruction, not biography. Some find it more poetic than informative; others want harder facts about her life.
People
Cast
Directing
- Lina PlioplyteDirector
Writing
- Ari Seth CohenWriter
- Lina PlioplyteWriter
Production
- Ari Seth CohenProducer
Recommended by
The Golden Girls, Calendar Girls, Book Club, Every Little Step