Intimately aligned with its 11-year-old protagonist’s point of view, Janet Planet takes place over the course of the summer of 1991, which young Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) spends with her acupuncturist mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), while three different adults drift through their lives over a couple of months. With big eyes made even bigger by her oversized glasses, stringy red hair, and a wardrobe mostly consisting of giant t-shirts that go down to her knees, Lacy presents herself as a prime target for middle-school bullying (she could also be a live-action Peanuts character). This is something Janet seems unconcerned with mitigating in any way. It’s as if Lacy was a bug that flitted into Janet’s open window one night and she decided not to squash it. That sounds harsh, as Janet does have moments of affection, as well as a magical-realist instance of self-awareness, as a parent, that I won’t spoil here. Still, Lacy is left largely to her own devices. And so she becomes a careful observer of the adults in her life, which is what first-time writer-director Annie Baker (a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright) emphasizes with her camera: a peek into the bedroom her mother shares for awhile with a man (Will Patton) as they sleep, her arm draped across his hairy, inhaling torso; the torn magazine page left behind by the local actor (Sophie Okonedo) who briefly crashes with them to escape an unhealthy relationship; the soft eyes of the commune leader (Elias Koteas) who drops by for dinner, with ambiguous intentions. Lacy watches, says little, then retreats to her attic bedroom where she serves tea—actually drops from a juice box—to the miniature figures she’s collected and keeps arranged behind a curtain. This is a sad film, if beautifully observed, about a young girl learning that she won’t always be able to have her mom to herself—that, in fact, she never really had her in the first place.
(6/23/2024)
