By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.7 cats
Director: Annie Baker
Starring: Elias Koteas | Julianne Nicholson | Sophie Okonedo | Will Patton | Zoe Ziegler
Year: 2024
Running time: 113
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28366692/reference/
Michael says: “Award-winning playwright Annie Baker makes the transition from theater to film and manages to bring with her the moments that make her plays so memorable, while utilizing the language of film to maximum effect. During the summer before she enters 6th grade, Lacey Planet is frustrated that she can’t seem to make friends. This, in severe contrast to her mother, Janet, who seems to be able to make people, especially men, like her with ease (despite the fact that her daughter and friends thinks she has particularly bad taste in men). Lacey gets through her summer practicing for her piano lessons, and trying to make sense of the three people her mother draws into her life, all while trying to understand why she has so much trouble finding a friend her age.
“Baker’s directorial style is uniquely attuned to her storytelling style. The lengthy pauses, and creative framing of scenes nearly pushes the audience into an uncomfortable position, but instead usually earns a laugh as something unexpected emerges. It took me about 20 minutes to sink into her unusual style, but once I did, I was fully engaged with it. In her screen debut, young Zoe Ziegler is perfect for this awkward role that captures both the uncertainty of childhood, and the awkward surety that she knows what’s best for herself and her mother. She and Baker seemed to work together effortlessly in that space of strained silence, and unexpected surprise. Julianne Nicholson is the perfect foil for her strong-willed daughter in a role that takes it’s time revealing itself. Baker’s transition to film is a real winner. 4 ½ cats
“Screened at the Independent Film Festival Boston 2024”
Aaron says: “Annie Baker is an exciting writer. John, The Aliens, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Flick are some of the more unusual and effective plays of recent memory. If you sit down to read The Flick, you’ll tear through it in 30 minutes. How does a quick read turn into a 3-hour production when staged? Uncomfortably long pauses. Silences that make audiences squirm. And somehow it works dramatically. The question is, how would Baker make the jump to film? Judging by JANET PLANET, the alchemy doesn’t quite translate to the screen.
“The always interesting Julianne Nicholson stars as Janet, mother to 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler), who is vocal about her unhappiness and lack of friends in a way that hints at depths the film will explore. Janet is equally unhappy and has unfortunate taste in men. Mother and daughter poke and prod at each other over a transitional summer at their Western MA home before Lacy starts sixth grade.
“Baker divides her film into three chapters as two of Janet’s love interests and an old friend pop in and out of the picture. With no score and a largely static camera, Baker’s darkly humorous and painfully honest dialogue and the actors’ deadpan line readings and reactions shine with little distraction. The hushed dialogue means the sound rarely rises above a murmur, punctuated by a few jarring exclamations that jolt with the force of a jump scare.
“The problem is that Baker operates at an arm’s-length from the action, and the distance from her characters creates a gap between her forensic analysis of characters she deeply adores and our ability to understand what makes these people tick and why we should care. The signature silences here are in effect, though not in the cracks between characters processing emotions but in performative moments that go on too long: a song here, a piano lesson there, and we’re left to sit through the beginning, middle, and end of these banalities. Not everyone did: the patience-testing scenes prompted one walkout. What should be rife with the push and pull dynamics of a complex central relationship, instead plays as studied and inert.
“Some have compared Baker’s directing style to Kelly Reichardt, but JANET PLANET lacks warmth and is postured in a way that clashes with the actors’ naturalism. Though individual scenes leave a mark with troubling psychological insights, Baker never allows her characters the breathing room to navigate plot points of equal magnitude. In interviews, Baker has said JANET PLANET is about ‘Falling out of love with your mother,F a tantalizing hook for a movie I wish I could have seen. 2 cats“
Chris says: “As seen in a cold open too wickedly good to spoil here, pre-teen angst has served bespectacled 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Zeigler) well, or at least to the point where she has her single mother (Julianne Nicholson) delicately wrapped around her finger. Moody but forthright, she spends the summer in their Western Massachusetts home in the woods carefully tending after a menagerie of little figurines, camped out in the front of the TV set and mostly taking her piano lessons seriously. Meanwhile, her mother becomes involved with three people to varying degrees, including a haunted divorcee (Will Patton), an old friend (Sophie Okenedo) and a pretentious cult guru (Elias Koteas!)