Film Review - Janet Planet (2023)

“I’m going to kill myself.” The startling opening line of Janet Planet is guaranteed to make the audience sit up and take notice. But the moment is put into a semblance of context when the young girl speaking into a payphone follows it up with “I’m going to kill myself if you don’t come and pick me up.” She’s talking to her mother and clearly summer camp – for that’s where she is – is not the fun it’s supposed to be.

The girl is Lacy (Zoe Ziegler), an 11 year old only child who lives with her single mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson), an acupuncturist, in a house tucked away off the beaten track. And, while the film guides us through one summer in the 90s, there’s a definite sense of this being a snapshot of what Lacy understands to be the norm. People drift in and out of Janet’s life – a taciturn boyfriend, an old friend from some years back and a new age guru – and they’re all relationships that the budding teenager watches from the outside. She has no friends and is, instead, preoccupied by her own imagination and life with her mother.

Annie Baker’s portrait of growing up is hardly rosy, despite the beauty of the countryside surrounding the family home. Much of it is viewed through Lacy’s eyes and coloured by her introverted nature and focus on her mother. Not only does she find it hard to make friends, she doesn’t understand adults either and anybody watching the film must hear bells ringing when Janet is talking to her friend Regina (Sophie Okonedo). We don’t hear their conversation and Regina is clearly upset while Lacy sits nearby, straining to hear what they’re saying and unable to work out what’s going on. We’ve all been there and it’s one of many examples of delicate but razor sharp observation of how the world appears to the youngster.

Instead of a conventional narrative, the film moves from scene to scene, many of which are full of the tiniest details. Lacy has made her own theatrical stage in miniature, with figures sporting headgear made from chocolate wrappings. She adds to it throughout the film in times of solitude, which are some of her few moments of contentment. The dreamlike quality that permeates the film works hand in hand with the way Janet herself seems to have let life happen to her rather than going out and finding it. And the suggestion is that her example could steer Lacy in the same direction. Even though the girl is too young to know what she wants, she already feels safe with what she knows, despite its shortcomings, and there’s already a hint of simmering teenage resentment brewing by the end of the film. Just watch her face in the closing scene.

The film boasts two superb performances. Newcomer Zoe Ziegler is truly remarkable as Lacy, a role that demands an unexpectedly physical acting style in the absence of dialogue. There’s a clarity and maturity about her acting which is simply astonishing, especially given that, in real life, Ziegler is almost the same age as her character. Julianne Nicholson (most recently in Weird:The Al Yankovic Story and Blonde) reminds us yet again that she’s a performer of subtlety and delicacy, somebody we don’t see often enough on screen. Not so much a story, more a series of events, Janet Planet takes its time as it examines Lacy’s world, but fills it with details which aren’t just beautifully observed, but tender to the point of painful.