‘Janet Planet’ review: The quiet struggles of a mom-daughter bond

“What are we even talking about when we talk about mothers?” muses Regina, portrayed by Tony Award-winning actress Sophie Okonedo, as she addresses Janet (Julianne Nicholson) after imagining what it feels like to be in a mother’s womb.

Pulitzer-winning playwright Annie Baker’s directorial debut, Janet Planet, the A24 coming-of-age indie that screened at Telluride, Berlin, and New York was just released on Netflix Philippines, just in time for your Mother’s Day celebration.

But this 2023 slow-burn drama is not for those who can only appreciate traditional Hollywood fare. Baker is known for her elliptical plays, where characters remain largely quiet, and scenes are packed with pregnant pauses. It demands immersion and will test the patience of those seeking melodrama.

In a 2023 interview with The New York Times, Baker shared, “I don’t think of myself as a provocateur, but I also don’t think of myself as an entertainer. People walk out of my plays all the time. I don’t get freaked out by it.”

The same can be expected in her first feature. Janet Planet is a gorgeously lensed, auteur-driven, low-budget drama that languidly explores the complex mother-daughter relationship, with plenty of silent moments.

The film follows 11-year-old, bug-eyed Lacy (Zoe Ziegler), who lives alone with her mother, Janet, in a woodsy area of Western Massachusetts. It is summer in 1991, an ideal setting to observe an adolescent girl with long stretches of time as she orbits, like a moon, her planet: her entire world, her mother.

In Baker’s minimalist visual language, she rarely strays from Lacy’s perspective and her insecure attachment to a mother who respects and understands her — but remains physically and emotionally distant.

Janet never shows overt affection toward Lacy, reluctantly accommodating her daughter’s request to stay longer with her in bed. At one point, Lacy says, “Can I have a piece of you?” And later, she asks her mother to hold her hand, a request Janet refuses. Lacy bargains, “Just for one minute?”

It’s heartbreaking, this need for physical affection from a mother lost in her own world. It’s not that Janet doesn’t love her daughter; this is where Baker’s meditative study of a woman as an individual comes into play. How we know our mothers, but also do not understand them. The way a mother is her own agency, and the responsibility of a child is one that tethers you to another human being whose needs you cannot fully give.

Shot on grainy, textured 16mm Kodak film by DP Maria von Hausswolff, the visual effect evokes nostalgia, with washed-out shots of a pre-Internet era, when kids watched TV and read comic books. Lacy spends much of her days watching her mother, absorbing her, and critically observing the men in her mother’s life as she moves from one boyfriend to another.

Baker designs Lacy as a loner who finds solace in her diorama of eclectic toys, hidden behind a curtain like actors in a play. She cannot explain her lack of friends and acknowledges her difficulty connecting with others, unlike Janet, who effortlessly connects with people. Opposing Janet’s magnetic maternal traits, Lacy asks her mother if she’d be okay with her dating a girl in the future, possibly repulsed by the men that come and go in Janet’s life.

The bohemian counterculture of Western Massachusetts is rendered with understated beauty, including scenes of performance art, oversized puppets, and a theater troupe-cum-commune, which Lacy finds exciting. These are not merely contrived visual elements; they tie into the themes of the child as spectator. This even culminates in an apt poetry reading of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Fourth Duino Elegy.

With no musical score, Baker relies on the natural soundscape. Frogs croaking, cicadas droning, and rustling trees. This creates a truly transportive experience, with Baker’s artistry reminiscent of Kelly Reichardt, and faintly calls to mind Céline Sciamma’s mother-daughter fairytale-realist Petite Maman (which is a masterpiece, and Janet Planet does not quite reach that level).

The film contains plenty of tender, introspective moments, and Ziegler skillfully conveys the interior life of Lacy. But Baker struggles to build momentum as she divides the narrative into three chapters introducing Janet’s various friends and lovers. These are rendered in intertitles, which shift the focus away from the central mother-daughter relationship. While these supporting characters are necessary to analyze Janet’s impact and dynamic with others, and serve as mini-conflicts, the episodic structure disrupts the sense of emotional continuity.

Still, Janet Planet is a lyrical, soulful portrait of the complicated mother-daughter relationship, especially one between a loving but emotionally detached parent. It offers a critical insight: mothers are separate individuals from their children, but still highly influential.

3.5 out of 5 stars

On Netflix and AppleTV+