Bare 2015

Sarah Barton lives in a small Nevada desert town, working as a cashier and sharing a quiet life with her mother. After a coworker’s complaint costs her the job, she starts feeling a little adrift and curious about what might lie beyond the ordinary routine. That curiosity leads her to Pepper, a drifter who has crashed at an antique store run by Sarah’s family. Pepper’s freewheeling, magnetic presence draws Sarah in, and she offers Pepper a temporary place to stay while she figures out her next move. As they spend time together, Sarah finds herself increasingly pulled into Pepper’s nightlife and party-focused world, much to the growing concern of her boyfriend, Haden, who doesn’t understand why she seems to have less and less time for him.

On a spontaneous trip to Reno, the two women chase a thrill by pulling a quick con on a gambler, laughing at their own audacity as the money piles up. After their victory, Pepper drops a revelation: she works at a strip club called the Blue Room, not merely as a bartender, but within the world of stripping. Intrigued and hungry for a different path, Sarah shifts from a fast-food job to trying out for the strip club herself. The other dancers doubt her initial assumption about Pepper’s role, and one dancer offers Sarah a sample of an unnamed drug. Buoyed by adrenaline, Sarah takes the stage. A desert peyote trip later with Pepper deepens their bond and brings a blunt confession: stripping is addictive and hard to walk away from, even when the money is tempting. The two pledge to support one another and promise to quit if the other can’t handle it, and they also acknowledge a private, mutual attraction that leads to a first kiss and then a deeper intimacy.

Back at home, friends and especially Haden grow worried as Sarah keeps her new life a secret. She ends things with Haden, telling him they’ve gone in different directions. Pepper’s past starts to surface when other strippers reveal that she has worked as a recruiter who targeted other women. Pepper denies trying to recruit Sarah or using her, though she acknowledges past work and the possibility of manipulation. After they work through these concerns, Sarah insists on paying off Pepper’s debts so they can run away together and start fresh somewhere else.

Yet trouble erupts when a dispute at the strip club escalates into a confrontation over debt. Sarah steps in to defend Pepper, but the scene brings her under scrutiny just as Haden and another friend arrive. In the ensuing commotion, a cop arrives and arrests Sarah for possession after she accidentally drops several drugs. Outed as both a stripper and a user, she initially tries to return to her old circle, only to find her friends too judgmental to understand. In a bid to make amends, she offers to reimburse her mother by taking a job back at the fast-food place she first applied to, and she and Pepper share a tearful moment of realignment. Sarah confesses that she has grown tired of the lifestyle and that it runs counter to her values, deciding that it cannot continue. In the final scene, Sarah is seen hitchhiking out of town by herself, stepping toward a future that feels more honest, even if uncertain.