Janet Planet: A Dreamy Summer of Mother-Daughter Turmoil

In Annie Baker’s languid and charming debut feature, an 11-year-old girl spends a fraught summer with her mother in rural Massachusetts, 1991. The film unfolds in a dreamy summer haze, caught between rapture and torpor, as the mother-daughter relationship unfolds.

A rural Massachusetts summer

The performances are strong, particularly Julianne Nicholson as single-mum Janet, who has recently completed her training as an acupuncturist and now has a practice called ‘Janet Planet’. Her daughter Lacy, played by newcomer Zoe Ziegler, hates summer camp and makes a plaintive payphone call to come home and moon about the house all summer long.

A nostalgic payphone call

As Lacy becomes an intimate witness to her mother’s tricky boyfriends and friends, who enter and exit her life in loosely chapter-headed segments, we see the complexities of their relationship. There’s Wayne, prone to histrionic migraines; Regina, an actor who may or may not be fully supportive to Janet’s needs; and Avi, the theatre troupe leader slash guru, who comes around to try to date Janet.

Avi, the bearded guru

Janet herself has a revealing scene where she confesses to the sardonically unimpressed Lacy that she’s always believed she could make any man she wanted fall in love with her if she really chose to. Lacy, like the audience, can see this for the alibi that it is.

A complex mother-daughter relationship

The film shows us that Lacy’s own relationship with her mother is flawed and compromised from the start. She loved hanging out at the mall with Sequoia, Wayne’s child from a previous relationship, but now that friendship is in the bin, thanks to her hopeless mother’s anti-talent for dating and men.

A lost friendship

In the end, the film drifts and eddies its way to an unresolved-chord of an ending, a little emotionally reticent but always beautifully presented. It’s a film that will resonate with anyone who’s experienced the difficulties of mother-daughter relationships.

A summer of turmoil comes to a close