Across a pivotal summer before entering sixth grade, Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) does what she can to cling on to her childhood and her mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson).  As the days pass, so too do three people who will have a profound impact on this small family unit, sometimes upsetting, other times enhancing the delicate balance between mother and daughter, but always skewing the line between child and adult. 

Annie Baker writes and directs Janet Planet, her feature debut after a career working for the stage.  The tender film debuted at Telluride in 2023 and made its rounds through the festival circuit, but was held by A24 for a limited summer theatrical rollout.  At 113 minutes, the film is full of evocative moments that place audiences intimately in the mind of young Lacy as she navigates the trials of growing up in a home with few boundaries. 

Despite being the title character, Janet is more of the object which the film is in search of and it is Lacy who is in all but one key scene.  Ziegler has the weight of the film on her shoulders and handles that responsibility with quiet grace and a surprising understanding of the task at hand, especially considering this is her debut role.  Baker asks her to lean into the weird and strange antics of a young girl, and Ziegler embraces that challenge wholeheartedly, not shying away from Maria von Hausswolff’s lens.   

Now, Ziegler is certainly offered plenty of chances to hide in the frame as Hausswolff’s camera is placed in some striking angles, heights, and distances, and Baker blocks the scenes with Lacy often sitting and observing just out of frame.  Audiences are only alerted to her presence when she interjects with a question or commentary or crosses the frame unexpectedly.  All of these choices, though, do not detract from her performance which remains shockingly realized and is a testament not only to Ziegler’s innate ability to interpret the text, but also to Baker for her expert translation from idea to page to life, and finally, to screen. 

Ziegler is not alone in this exploration of daughterhood, as the film is just as much an exploration of motherhood, and for that casting director Jessica Kelly found Nicholson who strikes the perfect balance of strength and vulnerability.  The script does not delve too deeply into what happened to Lacy’s father, all we know – and all we need to know – is that he is no longer in the picture and Janet has struck up a relationship with Wayne (Will Patton).  It is a fraught relationship, he is crude and Neanderthalic when compared to the more celestial Janet, but more than that, he and Lacy do not get along at all.  Wayne also marks the first loose chapter in which the film is broken into.  He occupies the scene like a black hole, unavoidable in his mass and his noise, a clear outlier in the world that Janet and Lacy have built for themselves, and a clear risk of destroying it.  The fallout happens late at night when Lacy pesters the man with questions while he is trying to rest from a migraine which he claims Janet had transferred to him.  He reaches out and strikes the girl.  Janet, taking quick action, banishes him from the home and the family, and when he later returns to beg forgiveness, Janet proves to us and to Lacy that she is a good mother and does not allow Wayne back.   

After Wayne, the film enters one of its interstitial interludes, laying the groundwork for the next body to fall into Janet’s orbit; Regina (Sophie Okonedo).  An old friend of Janet’s, they reunite at a spiritual retreat filled with music, dancing, thanksgiving, and elaborate costumes.  Having fallen out of a relationship herself with someone in the commune who was hosting the summer harvest celebration, Janet offers Regina the spare loft at the house until she can get back on her feet.  Lacy is both enamored by Regina in her relation to the commune, but envious of her in how much of her mother’s time she is beginning to occupy.  The tension simmers gently, never quite erupting between the two, but never not present though this time it is Lacy who can be seen as the aggressor – emulating the instigation of Wayne – not Regina, who is almost always acting in the way of a peacemaker caught between worlds.  It feels as if Baker is exploring how we become products of our environment, how our parents, our teachers, our home lives all inform our actions and can transform us – or, rather, in Lacy’s case, mold her – into the people we are, but it is handled more as a passing fascination encountered whilst on, rather than the purpose of, the journey.  Whatever Baker’s intentions were, it is hard to say, but at the close of Regina’s chapter when she is taken away and moved back to the commune, and all that is left of her is a torn off corner of a New York Magazine cover still taped to the wall, Lacy sits there looking at the scrap for a long time.  We never quite know if it is with regret or with pride or with relief, but as Hausswolff’s camera holds on that scrap for what feels like an eternity, we experience the whole spectrum of emotion along with Lacy and the confusing nature of big emotions which we may be too small to fully reconcile.  

We are unsure of what she is feeling in this specific moment, especially, because we are so unsure of what to make of Lacy and her collection of trinkets.  She longs for control, tangibility, and for order. Her fear of letting go is channeled into wild creativity that allows her to make little hats out of Lindt truffle wrappers for her various figures that she keeps hidden away behind a makeshift proscenium.  When it is time to play, it is Lacy who opens the curtains.  It is Lacy who winds the music box to make the figures dance.  It is Lacy who decides when it is morning and when it is time to sleep.  It is Lacy’s world, the only place where she has the control she desires in her own life.  A lesser performance would have the girl come off as malevolent or bratty, but Ziegler walks the lines and is able to make us empathize with a small, young girl in the fierce and wild world that is storming all around her when all she wants is her mother.  

There is one more person standing in the way between Lacy and Janet across this cicada-tuned summer; Avi (Elias Koteas).  His is the shortest chapter in the film, and also one of the strangest as it is the only chapter that finds Lacy and Janet separated for any real stretch of time.  Janet and Avi go on a picnic dinner one evening, and while Lacy is invited, she opts to stay home saying she is sick.  This picnic is the only major scene where Lacy is not involved, and her absence really throws our reading of the film into a bit of turmoil.  We do not see the fallout, but Janet’s thoughts are still clearly back home during the dinner and Avi leaves; Lacy has won, even at a distance.  It is such a strange scene, though, as while the film is not shot through Lacy’s direct perspective, the camera is often perched down at her level so that we can observe this all as a third person on an equal level to Lacy’s.  Here, she is removed from the, for lack of a better word, “action” of the scene, so we lose our own point of view and are witnessing this from a disembodied place.  It is strange, and while we can track everything that is happening, this untethering is certainly noticed, especially so late in the film. 

Janet Planet, resolves with a triumph, though, as Lacy steps onto the school bus and into her first day of sixth grade, albeit delayed, and onward to adulthood.  A bit of an old soul and an odd soul, we still find ourselves endeared to her despite her antics and the – to be a touch hyperbolic – emotional terrorism which she wreaks on her mother across the film’s run time.  While we leave Janet and Lacy on a high, as a film, Baker really has tried our patience, presenting too much of too little.  Watching it is akin to taking a photo album and blasting through it like a flip book; the film is comprised of more moments than actual scenes and the narrative form sinks slowly like melting jello in the sun.  Between the challenging framing and structure, there is very little payoff and an almost total lack of pacing seems to push us away because Lacy does not immediately want us here in the same way she does not immediately want to stay at summer camp. We never quite abandon this film, though, because Baker has spun a steadily interesting yarn for us to follow, even if we do not hold any true, meaningful resolution when the credits finally begin to roll.