Film Review: Janet Planet

          

                     Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler in "Janet Planet"               

As the show opens, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), the named star of this most unusual film, comes to pick up her 11-year-old daughter Lacy (Zoe Ziegler). It’s 1991 and Lacy has called her mom to rescue her from summer camp, an event apparently not appreciated by the kid.

(This is an understatement. Lacy had actually threatened to “kill myself if you don’t come get me.”) 

Thus begins playwright Annie Baker’s first feature film. In the rest of “Janet Planet,” we will meet an assortment of folks who may or may not remind you of folks you met at camp, if you ever did that sort of thing. This gang is, as one would expect, varied in age, interests and abilities, which will lead to some amusing scenes, but this place in rural Massachusetts looks more like an extended campsite than anybody’s idea of home. Then again, maybe that was the plan.

Janet makes her living as an acupuncturist. When we meet her, she has a much-older boyfriend named Wayne (Will Patton), who doesn’t show up often.

For no apparent reason, this leaves Lacy to fend for herself more often than not, and we see her practicing the piano on an electric keyboard and amusing herself with a homemade puppet theater peopled with tiny homemade figurines.

But as for human relationships, well, this is Another Thing, and the longer the show goes on, the odder it gets. At one point, Lacy asks mom, “Would you be disappointed if I might one day date a girl?

Janet muses that she’s always thought she could make any man fall in love with her.

“Will you stop trying?” asks Lacy.

Then there’s Avi (Elias Koteas), who does theater and likes to discuss the Big Bang when “there was nothing…..there was just God.”

And then Avi disappears.

This is a film like no other I’ve seen. Nominated for the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024, it is peculiar beyond words, but I found it odd but fascinating. See what you think. It’s currently playing at the Reading Cinemas Town Square, 4665 Clairemont Drive.