IMAGINE the “Golden Girls” a few years later, when they’re all in a nursing home, and you’ll get “Sunset Story,” an alternately funny and somber documentary that won a special jury award at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Inseparable friends Lucille, 95, and Irja, 81, live in Sunset Hall, a residence in Los Angeles for aging radicals.

They’re plagued by health issues – Lucille’s battling esophageal cancer, Irja’s wheelchair-bound after a serious heart attack – but they’re as feisty as ever, joining protest rallies, organizing voter-registration drives and good-naturedly bickering with each other.

Lucille: “She gets all the men.”

Irja: “If you want to listen to all their illnesses.”

They lean on each other literally and figuratively: Lucille pushes Irja’s wheelchair, which helps her balance her own unsteady gait.

But director Laura Gabbert doesn’t sentimentalize, allowing the women the quirks and vanities (Lucille won’t be filmed without her wig) that make this a realistic portrait.

While the recent “Assisted Living” made a mockery of the same subject matter, Gabbert expertly delivers a far more powerful message with honesty, humor and palpable respect.

It’s the little, human touches – the balcony sign that changes from “Free Mumia” to “Lift sanctions from Cuba,” their unabashedly frank discussion of sex (“It’s my theory that most people are bisexual,” says Lucille).

You’ll delight in their friendship – and weep when they’re separated by the inevitable.

But as one of them says, matter-of-factly, “Life goes on.”

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SUNSET STORY

(Three stars)

Ride off into this “Sunset.” Running time: 73 minutes. Not rated (nothing objectionable). At Cinema Village, 12th Street, east of Fifth Avenue.