“What are we even talking about when we talk about mothers?” The question, posed by Regina (Sophie Okonedo) in the midst of a drug-hazy cuddle puddle, is the central idea that animates Annie Baker’s verdant, sun-dappled debut feature, “Janet Planet.” For our heroine, 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler, in her first film role), it is the East (1991 Northampton, Massachusetts, to be exact) and Janet (Julianne Nicholson) is the sun. Lacy’s entire galaxy orbits around her mom, whose gravitational pull draws in a variety of suitors, lovers and friends, all impeding on Lacy’s time and attention from her mother.
In this portrait of a deeply loving and codependent mother-daughter relationship, Baker captures something ineffable about that bond, which is inextricably linked, body and soul, and what it looks like when that connection begins to inevitably fray with age. We open on Lacy making a late-night phone call, begging Janet to pick her up from summer camp. She wants to be at home with her mother, which also means being at home with Wayne (Will Patton), Janet’s current boyfriend, who occupies the first chapter of “Janet Planet.” While relationships may come and go, Lacy always remains, ever watchful, observing her mother’s behavior and how she moves between people.
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A chapter title dedicated to one person inherently suggests the end of that chapter and the beginning of another, and “Janet Planet” progresses through the peculiar end of their time with Wayne, and on to Regina, an old friend whom Janet and Lacy run into at a whimsical theatrical happening at a local farm/cult. Regina moves in with them, promising adventures to Lacy, but roommate challenges intrude on the friendship. Then there’s Avi (Elias Koteas), the dreamy, philosophical cult leader who seemingly appears out of thin air to pull Janet into his web.
Lacy watches and waits, taking her piano lessons down the road, playing with her troupe of dolls and figurines, eating ice cream, living both her own childhood and her mother’s adult life simultaneously, often bearing witness to or having conversations with her mother far beyond her own understanding but bringing her own childlike wisdom to bear. Janet confesses to Lacy that she knows she can make any man fall in love with her if she tries, and Lacy asks if she can simply stop trying. It’s a moment of breathtaking clarity that cuts to the quick.
But Janet doesn’t stop trying, and Lacy’s own obsessive love for her mother quietly evolves, as she comes to see her not as the sun around which life revolves but as a person continually compelled to orbit others, the cycle churning unceasingly. The expression on Ziegler’s face as the epiphany sets in is so utterly heartbreaking — finally seeing your parent as merely a flawed human being is an inescapable, often liberating but no less bewildering fact of life to which we all must attend.
Baker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, weaves a sensorial, time-bound spell with “Janet Planet,” which is an utterly transporting cinematic experience and sensual expression of season and setting: lush summer greenery exploding in a riot around a summer dinner eaten on a deck; a moment of stillness as Lacy practices on a keyboard, Janet watching.
“Janet Planet” transports us to this time and this age when all we had to do was just be present, to observe and ruminate on the analog world right in front of us, with the space to ponder the cosmically huge emotional world within us. It’s a bit hard to describe the surprising power of this film, but the temporal, emotional and sensory experience of “Janet Planet” is a uniquely rare gift that needs to be seen and savored.
MPA rating: PG-13 (for brief strong language, some drug use and thematic elements)
Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes
How to watch: In theaters
