Unexpected A24 hit leaves movie audiences 'torn wide open' and 'weeping' (2024)

While everyone loudly talks about hit films like Longlegs and Twisters, those of us who have seen A24’s Janet Planet aren’t talking at all.

Instead, we’re clutching our childhood stuffed animals and weeping as we reupholster our early memories in the warm ochre light of this perfect summer movie.

Janet Planet is not only a stunning directorial debut from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker, but it’s perhaps the closest any adult will come this summer to reliving the exquisite boredom and latent potential of their childhood summer breaks.

Set in rural Massachusetts, Janet Planet follows 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) and her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) as they navigate the final days of August and Lacy’s childhood.

Bespectacled and stoic, Lacy is having the universal experience of being certain she’s nothing like other kids. She’s also in perpetual orbit around her mother, who she observes closely, almost anthropologically, as Janet jumps from one intense, semi-toxic relationship to another.

Though Lacy is beholden to her mother throughout the film, there’s a sense of imminent change hovering around the edges, as if Lacy’s adolescent perspective is crouching in the dense forest surrounding their secluded home, waiting for its opening to pounce.

An early scene shows Lacy and Janet lying in bed together, both awake, as Lacy holds her mother’s face in the cicada-busy dark. Janet tells Lacy that Wayne (her live-in boyfriend) thinks its weird they still sleep together. After a moment, Janet stands and Lacy says, ‘Can I have a piece of you?’ Left with a strand of her mother’s hair, Lacy inspects it in the dark.

It’s a moment that poignantly encapsulates the entirety of the film: Lacy is attempting to understand her mother by close inspection and, in doing so, understand herself.

But if this sounds too quiet and meditative for your taste, let us assure you that it also boasts some of the sharpest, funniest dialogue committed to film in recent years, offering the kind of specificity that stays with viewers far longer than most cinematic experiences.

While many movies keep the viewer at a safe distance, Janet Planet enfolds audiences into a muggy afternoon and wedges them into the shoes of an 11-year-old who is just beginning to recognise that perhaps her mother isn’t perfect after all.

Despite this being her first foray into film, Baker has an uncanny ability to manipulate her audience’s sense of scale, expertly using the camera to depict life from Lacy’s point of view.

In one memorable sequence, Lacy opens the door to the living room to see her mother’s boyfriend curled up on the couch in the dark, suffering from a migraine.

The exchange that follows is relatively commonplace, but Wayne is shot in such a way that he becomes a sort of eldritch horror writhing in the dark while Lacy creeps hesitantly around the mouth of the cave in which he lurks.

Summarily, Baker is able to capture the urgency and terror of childhood: Every bad thing that happens is truly the worst thing to have ever happened.

But at the same time that the movie places a microscope on the world of its characters, it simultaneously transports us into Lacy’s point of view so effectively that the tiny world of the film feels as big to us as it does to Lacy.

Although Janet Planet didn’t receive the same fanfare and advertising as bigger summer blockbusters, word of mouth has made it a hit among film lovers.

It was a The New York Times Critics Pick, and the reviewer called it: ‘A tiny masterpiece – a perfect coming-of-age story,’ while The Guardian said that a ‘follow-up to this tender, perceptive little gem can’t come soon enough.’

Fans are also raving.

X user @Reckless_Edit wrote: ‘Finally saw Annie Baker’s JANET PLANET— an exquisite, poetic gem of a film. Every shot / cut proved purposeful. Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, and Sophie Okonedo are magnificent.’

@nowolvesplease posted: ‘LOVED Janet Planet. If you vibe to Kelly Reichardt, Eighth Grade (but even more attentive to child’s POV) and backwoods intensity, go and see!’

Fans on the movie review app LetterBoxd were also taken aback by the film’s simple beauty. User David Sims wrote: ‘I knew Annie would be able to bring her pregnant pauses and perfect, understated characterizations to the screen I just didn’t know she’d also be able to capture exactly how the air feels and sounds in late August.’

A poster with the username coffee agreed, writing: ‘An astonishing, major debut. The images in this should not be possible from a first-time director, both gorgeously composed (inspired by Weerasethakul?) and naturally lived in.

‘Inevitably will get compared to Aftersun but this is less concerned with memory than it is with being placed in a world you’re both unprepared for and too aware of, the inevitable moment of looking at your mother and starting to see her sadness. There’s a cut towards the end that tore my soul wide open. A movie that lets the wind blow through the leaves. Annie Baker is here to stay.’

If you’re as tired of superhero movies and routine fast-paced thrillers as we are, find a showing of Janet Planet near you and allow yourself the luxury of settling into something that’s as rich and tender as the dog days of August.

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