Playwright Annie Baker's feature film debut, Janet Planet, is a small wonder. It might lack the emotional impact or drama of Aftersun or Ladybird as far as a parent/daughter relationship goes, but in its quiet small ways, it depicts a meaningful, authentic mother-daughter relationship on film. Even though it's set in the summer of 1991 and the lack of cell phones indicates the era, Janet Planet is not at all a nostalgia trip. Its rural New England setting, the creaky wooden bungalows peppered with New-Age types emanate that distinctive short summer rental/impermanence vibe.
Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) is first seen sneaking out of the lodge in the middle of the night of her summer camp to call her mom Janet (Julianne Nicholson). She demands mom to pick her up, otherwise she will kill herself. Next morning, to her displeasure, she finds that both mom and mom's moody boyfriend Wayne (Will Patton), waiting to drive her home. She says she changed her mind. Too late.
Divided by chapters with Janet's love interests and friends' names, the film is seen from Lacy's point of view and her single mom making bad choices in men. Lacy, 11-years old, still insists on sleeping with mom in her bed. Janet doesn't treat her precocious and lonely daughter like a child, and always have heart-to-heart conversations - about her career trajectory (she recently got a license to be an acupuncturist and named her practice Janet Planet), her bad tastes in men, her beliefs that she can make any men fall in love with her if she tries, and how Lacy's forthrightness and (sometimes) aggressiveness make her wonder that she would be better off if she turns out to be a lesbian (and she means this as a complement). There are many other gems like that throughout.
Both Ziegler and Nicholson are wonderful. Sophie Okonedo and white bearded Elias Koteas make memorable appearances too. The dialog rings true. No character comes across as out of balance or overly stereotypical, considering its hippie environment. Baker gets the world of Lacy in detail- her odd doll collections, lying under the dining table and on the grass aimlessly for hours, getting sick with anxiety at the bus stop on the first day of middle-school and most important of all, fighting for her mom's attention among series of men that orbits her planet. Baker gets the haziness and dream-like pre-adolescence right. With a blink of an eye, it will be gone. But the grownup world, as witnessed by Lacy, is not that much different. There will be plenty of fights and screaming matches and resentment and all that in the future. She will find a girl her age to talk to, as evidenced in the beginning of the film with Wayne's daughter Sequoia. But for this brief time, mom and daughter relationship is precious, like a planet and its moon.
