JANET PLANET - Mark Reviews Movies

Janet Planet, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 27, 2024

Children see and know more than most adults acknowledge, and that's the case with the 11-year-old girl at the center of Janet Planet. Writer/director Annie Baker's film debut is about Lacy (Zoe Ziegler), who might be too smart for her own good to have friends her age but isn't quite aware enough to understand why that may be, as she navigates the complications of the summer before middle school and her mother's assorted relationships with friends, lovers, and men who want to be either—even though they'd definitely prefer the latter option.

Baker's story, then, is also about Janet (Julianne Nicholson), the mother, who lives in an isolated cottage in rural Massachusetts with her daughter, works as an acupuncturist, and can't quite figure out why her life, which seems so sturdy and charmed and filled with such potential to outsiders, feels like more than a bit of a mess. She can't hold down a steady romantic relationship, if the absence of Lacy's father from and the first chapter of the story are any indications, but then again, that's not entirely her fault. Others point out that Janet just has terrible taste in men—a fact she's more than willing to admit.

The story here isn't entirely about the men, of course, who come and go in reality or in Janet's mind as potential partners, just as it's not really about Lacy's inability to make friends. There's something deeper going on in Baker's tale between the lines of these episodes, featuring people becoming an important part of these two characters' lives and disappearing without a trace, and in the silence when these characters are observing life or considering a possible course to take. It's a subtle film about being a kid, being a parent, the bond between a mother and daughter, how life is just as confusing as an adult as it is as a kid (and vice versa), and how we never really stop learning about ourselves and our potential to change.

It's a small, understated, and lovely film with a couple of solid performances and a pair of fascinating characters at its center. Our first introduction is to Lacy, whose attendance at a summer camp comes to a sudden end when she calls her mother to pick her up early. She goes so far as to threaten suicide if Janet doesn't come as soon as possible, but it's the empty threat of a kid who is lonely, is afraid she won't make any friends, and desperately wants to be with the one person in the world who knows her, makes her feel safe, and doesn't judge her for being quiet, shy, and unsure of herself.

Janet does come the next morning, just after Lacy realizes too late that some of the other kids would be willing to talk to her if she gave them and herself a chance. Regretting her decision, Lacy asks if she can stay longer, but practical Janet points out it would look strange. Besides, she was able to convince the camp to refund some of the deposit, and in just this little exchange, Baker gives us an impression of a mother who's honest with her daughter and a daughter who trusts her mother enough not to argue with the mother's decisions, even if she doesn't like them.

The two are as close as close can be. Lacy still likes to sleep in bed with Janet, which is an ongoing habit that the mother's current boyfriend Wayne (Will Patton) finds odd and one that Janet protests against—but not with too much effort, which says something about the mother's feelings about that arrangement.

With that relationship quickly but firmly in place, the story continues across three different chapters, each one titled after a visitor into the mother and daughter's shared world. The first involves Wayne, whom Lacy distrusts until the boyfriend introduces the girl to his own daughter from a failed marriage. The promise of a friend changes a bit about Lacy's opinion of Wayne (Her only companions are little figurines she tends to like a parent), even after he reveals why his marriage might have broken up in the first place. Janet asks Lacy for advice about the relationship, and Lacy tells her mother what she thinks Janet needs to hear, even if it means losing a friend.

The next section has Regina (Sophie Okonedo) staying with the two after Janet's friend leaves a theater troupe that has the aura of a cult. There's a lot of subtlety to this segment in particular—the way Regina confides some resentment of her friend to the friend's daughter, how Lacy might intentionally annoy the houseguest for that, little moments such as an unheard conversation through a window and Regina avoiding the girl that Lacy probably recognizes despite the adults' best efforts to hide them.

The third part is titled after Avi (Elias Koteas), the leader of the possible cult, but by this point, things have changed for our main characters. Lacy is supposed to be going to school again but worries herself to illness, and as for Janet, the key sign of what changes have happened for her arrive by way of what we only think we're seeing. It's a neatly pointed trick of misdirection, just as the film's final scene hints at change by way of a notable shift in one character's perspective.

We may not know for sure how things will turn out for Janet by the end of Janet Planet, and we definitely have no clue how the rest of Lacy's life will develop and evolve in the years going forward. When our time with these two does come to a conclusion, though, we have a strong sense that we're witnessing as much of a beginning as an ending, and there's something hopeful and bittersweet about the way these characters have changed and the mystery of what the future holds for them.

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