Indie Spirit Revue: "Janet Planet"
Monday, January 20, 2025 at 10:00AM by Nick Taylor
I was pleasantly surprised by Janet Planet after hearing months of ecstatic reviews following its festival premiere before it got wide distribution. So often, when we get films from lauded theatre directors or playwrights, there's usually a built-in leeway for those artists not playing with cinema as fully or successfully as they might. But Annie Baker has no such timidity, and the assurance behind Janet Planet's audiovisual richness would be extraordinary for any director. The fact that she translates her idiosyncrasies with dialogue and character is an added bonus - how often do we get so lucky?...
Janet Planet follows eleven-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) and her mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson, always welcome), living through the summer of '91 in rural Massachusetts. Janet's a hippie who makes a living as a licensed acupuncturist. She's lived a lot of lives and met a lot of loves, and Lacy is paying a little more attention to her mom than she normally does. Janet, in turn, is studying her daughter, trying to better understand Lacy while she's still a kid.
To steal a line from my friend Ray, we're in the ballpark of Aftersun's study of parent and child trying desperately to understand each other and not quite achieving it, even as they intuit a lot. Or 20th Century Women, whose characters plainly vocalize the fact they'll never completely see each other and the desire to know each other as best they can despite it. (The latter comparison is also met out in its vivid supporting players, namely a sublime Sophie Okonedo). Baker's not quite at those levels of so-specific-it's-universal, but she earns those comparisons in spirit without seeming to rely on anyone else's ideas about how movies should look, feel, or sound. She achieves comparable highs while grounding her characters in a very distinct Pacific Northwest milieu.
Baker is similarly skilled at conjuring meticulous tableaus with almost off-handed ease. Paul Hsu's sound mix and Maria von Haussenwolf's lensing endow every frame with the buzzing ephemera and unbelievably varied color scheme of a summer sunset. It's a series of Polaroids taken on the spur of the moment and transformed into an almost otherworldly scrapbook. Even if I think Janet Planet tilts a little too hard towards opacity and hermetically sealed tableaus, Baker issues herself a series of demanding challenges I wish more films aspired to. It's already been announced she's working on her second feature, and you bet your ass I'll be hyped to see it.
Janet Planet is nominated for Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay, and Best Cinematography at the Spirit Awards.
Reader Comments (2)
It's not the Pacific Northwest, but New England, as you first mention.
Julianne Nicholson has been killing it in these supporting roles for years,is it only cinephiles who love her work.
Novitiate where she was Oscar worthy excellent,Black Mass where she stole a scene from Johnny Depp,August Osage County where she underplayed and outclassed even Meryl.
When is a top class director going to put her in a great lead role,she is so deserving of the flowers that will come her way if someone did.