The title of renowned playwright Annie Baker’s first film as a director, Janet Planet, comes from the name of an acupuncture office run by Janet (Julianne Nicholson), a 40-something single mother, somewhere in the hippie section of New England. Alternative lifestyle characters are not often the subjects of film, and that’s one of the pleasures of this one.
More central is the relationship between Janet and her 11-year-old daughter Lacey (Zoey Ziegler). It is in every way not what we have come to expect in movies with mothers and daughters. First of all, Lacey is not cute or preternaturally wise. From a lifetime of watching child performers, my first reaction was that she’s homely. My second, and better, reaction was to recognize that millions more kids in this world look like Lacey than whatever charming moppet we usually see on screen.
Beyond that, Baker is committed to presenting things from Lacey’s point of view instead of from that of an adult observer, and she succeeds very well, which gives the film a curious, interesting flavor. Lacey lines up all her little figurines behind a theatrical curtain in her room, opening it when she’s alone to gaze at them and dream, or put them in various poses or outfits. She’s very serious, and determined to understand as much as she can about the world. An extreme sensitivity makes her ask Janet to bring her home early from summer camp. Later she manages to get sick so as to avoid going back to school—she practices caution and self-protection. She doesn’t have any real friends.
The main thing is that she’s deeply bonded with Janet. Janet doesn’t discourage this. She continues to be as present and available to her daughter as possible while granting her as much freedom of choice as she can. This is another unexpected pleasure—I thought Janet’s parenting was going to be framed as a problem in some way, but it isn’t.
The story takes place in a single summer, with Janet (and by extension, Lacey) taking up with three different people. A divorced older man named Wayne, played by Will Patton, is suffering from chronic ailments and fails to really connect with Lacey, although there is one good day where she gets to hang out with his daughter Sequoia, and she likes Sequoia. But Wayne’s odd behavior and sometimes scary mannerisms make him unsuitable. After Janet takes Lacey to a festival where there’s dancing and an elaborate puppet show, an old friend of Janet’s, Regina, played by Sophie Okenedo, happens to be there and ends up crashing at Janet’s place for a bit. Their reconnection starts out as joyous but gets into some confusing crossing of signals, and so they part. Finally, Janet takes up with Avi, played by Elias Koteas, the director of the community that put on the puppet theater. Avi is a mysterious poetic man who has more to offer than his sometimes pretentious delivery would have you think.
Everybody in the film is imperfect and weird in their own way. Baker’s smart natural dialogue, and the gentle tone and structure of her direction makes Janet Planet a delightful stimulus to mind and heart, reflecting the balance of mother and daughter—Janet, open and engaged, Lacey concentrating on just getting through her life, the two of them inseparable.
