Janet Planet
Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Annie Baker’s debut film is a sublime mother–daughter coming-of-age tale that pays extraordinary attention to the ordinary.
It’s 1991 and 11-year-old Lacy is determined to escape camp, where she’s convinced her bunkmates don’t like her, and instead spend as much time with her mother as possible. A charismatic, forthright acupuncturist and single parent living in the woods of Massachusetts, Janet loves her daughter but finds her clinginess increasingly burdensome. Over the course of the summer, as Janet connects and reconnects with other adults – a boyfriend, an old friend, a new friend of sorts – Lacy’s vivid imagination helps her come to terms with her mother’s and her own impending womanhood.
Drawing comparisons to Kelly Reichardt (First Cow, MIFF 2020) and Celine Song (Past Lives, MIFF 2023), Baker has written an immaculately nuanced script and directs with an equally intimate, restrained touch. Collaborating with cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff, who shoots on 16mm, the acclaimed playwright turned filmmaker imbues her debut with a warm nostalgia that bathes Julianne Nicholson’s Janet and newcomer Zoe Ziegler’s Lacy in an almost surreal haze. Beautifully poignant, gently hilarious and always charming, Janet Planet is a certain marvel.
“A magical and assured drama that announces the Pulitzer Prize winner as a filmmaking talent as well as a literary one … Not just one of the great films of its year, but one of the finest first films in the annals of the medium.” – Little White Lies
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