(courtesy IMP Awards)
SNAPSHOT
In rural Western Massachusetts, 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) spends the summer of 1991 living at home, enthralled by her own imagination and the attention of her mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson). Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker captures a child’s experience of time passing, and the ineffability of a daughter falling out of love with her mother, in this singularly sublime debut. Janet Planet is written and directed by American indie filmmaker / playwright Annie Baker, making her feature directorial debut with this film, after previously writing the screenplay for the I Love Dick TV series, as well as various plays. Produced by Annie Baker, Andrew Goldman, Dan Janvey, and Derrick Tse. (courtesy First Showing)
This looks absolutely wonderful.
Slice-of-life films like the quietly powerful Janet Planet give us a chance to join people at a particular point in their lives and to journey with them for a certain period of time.
These narrative trips don’t tell us everything about the people taking them but they tell us enough and give us a passing intimate look at what happens to these people, giving birth to the kind of insight, empathy and understanding that always stands us in good stead.
This looks like a particularly moving example of the genre that returns to what it is like to view life through the prism of a child and how that reminds as adults that there is more than one way to look at the world.
Janet Planet opens in select US cinemas on 21 June before opening more widely 28 June; Australian release date TBC.