What do you do to try to feel smarter? Maybe you redownload Duolingo, or buy a copy of "Ulysses"—or, if you're filmmaker Hannah Crane, you adopt the pen name Chantal and write a novel with your Greatest Generation friend Barbara about a 69-year-old woman seducing a virgin male teaching assistant. Based on extensive interviews with silver-haired adult actresses, obviously.
In her latest documentary "Smart Girl," Crane unpacks her childhood insecurity around her older sister Leah—who taught herself how to read at age 4—being "the smart one." That insecurity, according to Crane, led to a lifetime of comparing herself to a sibling who would eventually become, and this is true, an astrophysicist with aspirations to write Arthurian fantasy novels in her free time. Tough break!
In order to compete with her sister's fantasy novel project, Crane—whose day job is script supervisor for "Last Week Tonight" with John Oliver—decides to write her own book. The resulting three-year quest to write and publish that book leads her from her local library's Scrabble meetup all the way to porn conventions in Las Vegas and Chicago.
In the movie, which Crane describes as a "comedically tilted video," the filmmaker interviews older adult actresses for the resulting novel, titled "Hot GILF Goes Back to School to Learn a Lesson," Crave forges intergenerational relationships (not like that) and uncovers some family history that helps her reframe the way she thinks about being a smart girl.
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