Hull Independent Cinema: Janet Planet

Dir Annie Baker | USA | 2022 | 113 mins | Rated 12A | English

In rural Western Massachusetts, 11-year-old Lacy is an unapologetic oddball who sits awkwardly on the brink of adolescence. She spends the summer of 1991 at home, enthralled by her own imagination and the casual magnetism of her mother, Janet, whose curse, she says, is that she can make anyone fall in love with her. As the months pass, three visitors enter their orbit, all captivated by Janet. Lacy struggles to understand why her mother would need anyone but her in this exquisite account of a complex mother-daughter relationship.

Starring Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler

AWARDS AND FESTIVALS
Berlin International Film Festival: Nominee, Panorama Audience Award
Melbourne International Film Festival:
Bright Horizons Award

REVIEWS
“We understand every word and action here to have symbolic value, and Janet Planet is not afraid of its own artificiality.” ★★★★ Clarisse Loughrey, The Independent

“Janet Planet plays a little like a memory piece from an unknown future – the assembled past life of an adult who, as a child, grasped only a bare majority of the tensions unfolding about her.” ★★★★ Donald Clarke, Irish Times

“An exquisite and treasurable account of a complicated mother-daughter bond.” ★★★★ Wendy Ide, Observer

“Nostalgic but never naff, Janet Planet fills the screen with warmth and compassion for its charming, flawed and very human characters.” Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, AWFJ.org