Janet (Julianne Nicholson) is the whole world for her only child, 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler). Bespectacled, gauche and still partially unformed as a human, Lacy is fascinated by her casually magnetic mother, examining her hungrily and attempting to read her as if she’s a map to navigate the mysteries of the adult world. It’s an intense relationship, poised on the brink of change, with Lacy’s adolescence lurking just around the corner.
But it’s this sense of precious transience that makes Janet Planet, the feature debut of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker, such an exquisite and treasurable account of a complicated mother-daughter bond. It’s a moment caught in the amber light of an endless summer in rural western Massachusetts. And if by the film’s close Lacy is starting to see her mother differently, she’s still not ready to loosen her clinging grasp on Janet, whose hand she holds when she can’t sleep, and whose hair she keeps as a protective talisman.
