With her Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Flick<\/em>, Baker demonstrated a keen appreciation for movies as a medium, and Janet Planet<\/em> doesn\u2019t simply feel like a stage drama brought to the screen. As a filmmaker, she often lets dialogue between her actors breathe, using minimal cuts in those scenes and allowing the performances to shine, which is a solid fit for a film that is so character driven and filled with such strong work from its cast. The editing becomes more prominent in transitional and establishing moments, and there\u2019s a memorable scene where she uses framing to comic effect when the audience might assume that a character isn\u2019t present, but she is instead only out of our sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Janet Planet <\/em>is largely set over a summer in western Massachusetts, focusing on the lives of Janet (Julianne Nicholson), a hippie acupuncturist, and Lacy (Zoe Ziegler), her unconventional daughter who is still very much a kid. Since it is just the two of them, they have built their own little world in a wood-paneled home in the woods, but occasionally others enter their orbit, including Janet\u2019s boyfriend Wayne (Will Patton), her old friend Regina (Sophie Okonedo), and Avi (Elias Koteas), a charismatic man from a nearby commune. Baker structures the film in roughly three acts, shifting between those three people and how the close attachment between Janet and Lacy accommodates a third person over the course of a few months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With touches like that, Janet Planet<\/em> is marvelously detailed. It isn\u2019t just about a tween in the early \u201890s; it\u2019s specifically from the perspective of an awkward girl growing up in a very crunchy home in western Mass who reads Jean M. Auel for the juicy bits and learns piano from the sweet old woman down the street who gives her a single Lindt truffle at the end of her lesson. Baker and production designer Teresa Mastropierro recreate the era with a comforting precision: the house feels appropriately lived-in, from Lacy\u2019s bookshelf-turned-dollhouse filled with a motley crew of figurines to the door propped open to let the breeze into the non-air-conditioned interiors. For viewers who experienced that time, there\u2019s a sense of wonder at how everything looks just as it did then, perfectly weathered and real. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet the most amazing find might be newcomer Ziegler as the young Lacy. Baker doesn\u2019t feel the need to make her an overly cute kid; she lets her be occasionally, endearingly annoying in a way that feels true to life. Even those moments come from a point of curiosity or insecurity rather than meanness. Over the course of its <\/em>nearly two-hour runtime, Janet Planet<\/em> and Ziegler build the audience\u2019s affection for the character, and by the end, I would\u2019ve died for her. She feels like such a whole person that I can\u2019t help but wonder where adult Lacy is in 2024. Wherever it is, I hope she\u2019s happy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Janet Planet” is out Friday in New York; it opens nationwide on June 28.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/janet2-1024x576.jpg\")
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Baker\u2019s freshman film is tender but not overly twee in its depiction of this mother-daughter relationship. Janet Planet<\/em> presents a clear-eyed look at these characters, acknowledging their flaws and idiosyncrasies as much as their strengths. It is alternately sweet and sharp; Baker clearly cares about these people, but she isn\u2019t afraid to poke a little fun at them. I may have cackled at a \u201cFree Tibet\u201d bumper sticker, which communicates so much about a character and a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\nA-<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n