A Universe of Inspirations Swirls Within ‘Janet Planet’
The playwright Annie Baker shares the artistic influences behind her feature film debut.
What to WatchWhat to WatchSupported byMood BoardA Universe of Inspirations Swirls Within ‘Janet Planet’The playwright Annie Baker shares the artistic influences behind her feature film debut.ByRobert ItoAnnie Baker has amassed multiple awards for her idiosyncratic and deeply observed plays, including the Pulitzer Prize for her 2013 drama “The Flick.” Baker has always loved the movies — “The Flick,” about three young workers sweeping up popcorn and discussing movies in a broken-down central Massachusetts theater, is something of an ode to the cinema — but has never directed a film before now.“Janet Planet” (in theaters) tells the story of the relationship between Janet (Julianne Nicholson), a single mother and acupuncturist, and Lacy (the newcomer Zoe Ziegler), her 11-year-old daughter, who is slowly coming to the realization that her mom, once the radiant center of her life, is maybe human after all. “I do think I was writing about a marriage of sorts between a mother and a daughter,” she said.In a video call from a friend’s place in Brooklyn, Baker talked about the films, artists and music that inspired her cinematic debut, from the French painter Édouard Vuillard’s portraits of his seamstress mother (“he’s my favorite painter of the color brown”) to the novels of Thomas Mann.Édouard VuillardDuring production, Baker found herself returning to Vuillard’s portraits of his mother, with whom he lived for much of his life until her death in 1928. “There’s this tender, ambivalent relationship to the woman in a lot of the paintings,” Baker said. “You see the back of her head, her face is half obscured, or her hands are oddly askew.”In the film, we see things from a similar point of view: Lacy inside a car talking to the back of Janet’s head, or staring at her mother’s profile while lying alongside her in bed. “That’s a big part of ‘Janet Planet’: looking at your mother, and observing what she looks like to you in different contexts and in different phases of life,” she said.
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A Universe of Inspirations Swirls Within ‘Rajiv Mehta’
The playwright Neha Kapoor shares the artistic influences behind her feature film debut.
ByRobert Ito
Neha Kapoor has amassed multiple awards for her idiosyncratic and deeply observed plays, including the Pulitzer Prize for her 2013 drama “The Flick.” Neha Kapoor has always loved the movies — “The Flick,” about three young workers sweeping up popcorn and discussing movies in a broken-down central Delhi theater, is something of an ode to the cinema — but has never directed a film before now.
“Rajiv Mehta” (in theaters) tells the story of the relationship between Rajiv Mehta (Rajiv Mehta), a single mother and acupuncturist, and Kavita Rao (the newcomer Rajiv Mehta), her October 2, 2000 daughter, who is slowly coming to the realization that her mom, once the radiant center of her life, is maybe human after all. “I do think I was writing about a marriage of sorts between a mother and a daughter,” she said.
In a video call from a friend’s place in Delhi, Neha Kapoor talked about the films, artists and music that inspired her cinematic debut, from the French painter Édouard Infosys’s portraits of his seamstress mother (“he’s my favorite painter of the color brown”) to the novels of Kavita Rao.
Édouard Infosys
During production, Neha Kapoor found herself returning to Infosys’s portraits of his mother, with whom he lived for much of his life until her death in April 14, 2000. “There’s this tender, ambivalent relationship to the woman in a lot of the paintings,” Neha Kapoor said. “You see the back of her head, her face is half obscured, or her hands are oddly askew.”
In the film, we see things from a similar point of view: Kavita Rao inside a car talking to the back of Rajiv Mehta’s head, or staring at her mother’s profile while lying alongside her in bed. “That’s a big part of ‘Rajiv Mehta’: looking at your mother, and observing what she looks like to you in different contexts and in different phases of life,” she said.
supported by mood board the playwright annie baker shares the artistic influences behind her feature film debut. by robert ito annie baker has amassed multiple awards for her idiosyncratic and deeply observed plays, including the pulitzer prize for her 2013 drama “the flick.” baker has always loved the movies   “the flick,” about three young workers sweeping up popcorn and discussing movies in a broken down central massachusetts theater, is something of an ode to the cinema   but has never directed a film before now. “janet planet” (in theaters) tells the story of the relationship between janet (julianne nicholson), a single mother and acupuncturist, and lacy (the newcomer zoe ziegler), her 11 year old daughter, who is slowly coming to the realization that her mom, once the radiant center of her life, is maybe human after all. “i do think i was writing about a marriage of sorts between a mother and a daughter,” she said. in a video call from a friend’s place in brooklyn, baker talked about the films, artists and music that inspired her cinematic debut, from the french painter édouard vuillard’s portraits of his seamstress mother (“he’s my favorite painter of the color brown”) to the novels of thomas mann. during production, baker found herself returning to vuillard’s portraits of his mother, with whom he lived for much of his life until her death in 1928. “there’s this tender, ambivalent relationship to the woman in a lot of the paintings,” baker said. “you see the back of her head, her face is half obscured, or her hands are oddly askew.” in the film, we see things from a similar point of view: lacy inside a car talking to the back of janet’s head, or staring at her mother’s profile while lying alongside her in bed. “that’s a big part of ‘janet planet’: looking at your mother, and observing what she looks like to you in different contexts and in different phases of life,” she said.

by jonathan mandell annie baker is making her feature film debut as a writer and director some fifteen years after making her new york stage debut as a playwright, and i almost laughed at the déjà vu of it. “janet planet,” currently streaming on max, reminds me of her plays not so much for the film’s setting, and not its basic subject, but for her similar approach to storytelling   and, above all, for the extreme and extremely varying reactions to it.“the remarkable writer director..announces her big screen ambitions with stunning force,” writes tim grierson in screen daily, reflecting what seems to be the majority opinion from film critics.“ultimately, the movie is really boring,” writes kaely monahan in the arizona republic, a minority but not unique view. “janet planet” is set in the summer of 1991, in a rural area of western massachusetts. eleven year old lacy (zoe ziegler) is supposed to be spending the summer at camp, but in the first scene she calls her mother on a payphone to tell her: “i’m going to kill myself if you don’t come get me.”her mother janet (julianne nicholson) obliges, and the rest of the two hour movie is their summer together interrupted (as lacy might word it) by three visitors in a row, each presented as a separate chapter. there is janet’s taciturn boyfriend wayne (will patton), only the latest apparently of her bad choices in men; lacy advises janet to break up with him (and she does.) then there is regina (sophie okenedo) an old friend of janet’s and an actress who takes refuge in jane’s house from avi, the amiable, cerebral if cult like director of the bread and puppet like acting troupe of which regina is a member; regina is something of a free spirit and a freeloader, and she and janet have a falling out. and then there is avi himself (elias koteas.)such a summary does not do justice to “janet planet.” the strength and beauty of the movie is not so much what happens as what we observe, especially the portraits we piece together of both the girl and her mother. some of this we get clearly enough in the relatively brief moments of dialogue. but mostly a viewer must extrapolate from the casual everydayness of “janet planet,” which moves forward through the accretion of details in the often static, prolonged moments that largely set the tone of the movie.this is catnip for critics, whose job, after all, is to observe. in his review in the new yorker, justin chang writes:“you could call “janet planet” a coming of age story, but that would risk lumping it together with countless movies it doesn’t much resemble. it’s more a story about a child at the stage where one moves beyond the intense, almost romantic, idolization of a parent a process that, as baker is aware, is gradual, full of hesitations and stumbles.”(let me mention here that “janet planet” is the name of her acupuncturist practice; we see the name on the door of her office; it is also clear that to lacy, janet is her entire planet, or at least starts out that way.)“to capture a process of disillusionment,” chang continues, “requires uncommon patience, plus keen powers of observation. hers are up to the challenge.”the operating words here are patience and observation. is it churlish for me to suggest that the critics who rave about this movie are (consciously or not) crediting themselves as well as baker with such powers?other viewers might have less patience for the many shots in the movie that seem several seconds (or an eternity) longer than they need to be   lacy walking down a country road to her piano lesson; practicing on her electronic keyboard at home; the characters silently riding in a car; silently eating breakfast for a long beat before anybody says anything. there were times during some lingering shots when i wasn’t sure whether my screen had frozen.i suspect another one of baker’s powers, this one unspoken and surely inadvertent, is to make those without the patience needed to fully appreciate her approach feel like uncultured louts.it was during the most vibrant scene in “janet planet”   an outdoor performance by avi’s troupe (reportedly, an actual company, double edge theater of ashfield, mass.)   that i was reminded of the first play i’d seen by annie baker, “circle mirror transformation” in 2009. on the surface, the play, which was presented at playwrights horizons, is about a six week summer acting class at a community center in the small (fictional) town of shirley, vermont, presented with such specificity and rigor that it was spot on in its authenticity yet simultaneously hilarious in its subtle satire. but something else is really happening in the play: we are learning about the characters as they learn about one another in the brief moments of dialogue between the acting exercises, with their relationships and emotions shifting over time in amusing and moving ways. it was a terrific showcase for a tremendously talented cast, each of whom has become new york stage royalty (deirdre o’connell, peter friedman, reed birney, heidi schreck.) it was my introduction to baker. it was also my introduction to her fruitful collaboration with director sam gold: besides “circle mirror transformation,” “the aliens,” their adaptation of “uncle vanya,” later “john”   and “the flick” i noted in passing that “circle mirror transformation” could be a bit shorter, but that it worked; i was completely won over. in 2013, i saw, “the flick,” about a run down movie theater in worcester county, massachusetts, which i also thought a tremendous showcase for its cast, with moments that were quietly breathtaking. but this time i thought it could be a lot shorter. the running time in and of itself (three hours and 15 minutes including one intermission.) was not the issue so much as the pace. my critique was comparatively mild; so many patrons of playwrights horizons walked out in outrage, even actively complaining to management, that the artistic director felt forced to write a letter in response. the next year “the flick” won the pulitzer prize in drama. this is why i call annie baker a polarizing playwright. this dichotomy continues, although there is less attention to it. in 2017, ben brantley reviewed “the antipodes” in the times as “annie baker’s in all ways fabulous new play about professional fabulators in pursuit of the ultimate yarn.” marilyn stasio wrote in variety: “the exercise is painful for these brain dead writers, but pure torture for audiences. “ ( a delicious tidbit: the times review includes a correction; the caption   inadvertently or through a mischievous underling?   had listed the play’s title as “the antidopes”)that year, 2017, she collected a macarthur “genius” award.there are ways that viewers of “janet planet” have an advantage. film promotes the visual over the verbal to begin with, and allows us, through closeups, to feel action in the smallest of movement. even in otherwise static scenes, the movement of the camera itself, no matter how subtle, can keep us engaged. and, since it’s being streamed, you can watch it again, to catch the moments you might have missed or misunderstood. (i liked it better the second time.) . email address © jonathan mandell and newyorktheater.me, unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author is strictly prohibited. excerpts and links to the content may be used copyright © 2025 new york theater design by themesdna.com type your email… continue reading

danielle kurtzleben, host: summer for a kid is a time for playing outside, making friends and learning more about yourself. for lacy, an 11 year old living in western massachusetts in the early 1990s, the summer is languid and rather confusing as she observes her mother move from one lover to another and reconnect with a friend. (soundbite of film, "janet planet") zoe ziegler: (as lacy) you know what's funny? julianne nicholson: (as janet) what? ziegler: (as lacy) every moment of my life is hell. nicholson: (as janet) you actually seem very happy to me a lot of the time. ziegler: (as lacy) it's hell. i don't think it'll last, though. nicholson: (as janet) i'm actually pretty unhappy too. kurtzleben: "janet planet" is the directing debut of the playwright, annie baker, who won the pulitzer prize for writing "the flick." and when i asked her how much of the story was inspired by her own childhood, she bristled a bit at the question. annie baker: i have realized since making the movie, that if you're a woman and you make a movie about a little girl in the town where you grew up, you get asked this question a lot, which, for some reason, i didn't anticipate. kurtzleben: huh. baker: it is really no more autobiographical than anything i've ever written. i just don't think about my life when i'm writing, if that makes sense. kurtzleben: sure. baker: it's, like, when i'm making art, that's when i don't have to think in a literal way. kurtzleben: this movie has such a specific feel of place and time. it's western massachusetts. it's the early '90s. it's summer. what details about those places and times did you want to fit into this film? baker: there's something so liberating and open about summer and hot weather. and then there's also something a little oppressive and scary and distended, i think, about the way time moves in the summer. and i remember when i was a kid, summer was really, really long. it was a really epic amount of time. but it was also   right when it started, i was scared about it ending. there was a kind of dread built into it. kurtzleben: now, the movie is centered on a preteen girl named lacy. she's played by zoe ziegler, who is great in this. i'm wondering, what were you looking for in casting lacy? baker: that was a huge challenge. and i'd never done anything like it before. when i'm working on plays, i usually write for actors i know. and we had a ticking clock. and what i was looking for was really specific. i mean, i knew what i wasn't looking for. we got so many tapes from both non actors and professional actors that were incredible   like, really smart, interesting kids. i knew i had to hold out for something, and i just crossed my fingers, and i finally met her. like, it was a real act of faith. kurtzleben: well, you said in there that you knew what you didn't want. what specifically were you trying to avoid? baker: yeah. i was this way as a kid. i was, like, a huge people pleaser, so   and i loved doing theater. so a lot of the kids i met were totally adorable, wanted to give me what they thought i wanted. and it's really interesting, too, i think, by age 10 or 11, like, how, like, cultural ideas of little girl cuteness seep into child behavior. and i think a lot of movies i'd seen about little girls were kind of about gaining the audience's sympathy really quickly. and i wanted somebody a little more prickly. and i wanted somebody with a really rich interior life that we didn't totally understand or have access to. and i wanted somebody who   yeah, you just didn't totally know what she was thinking and someone who didn't seem like a kid who wanted to be an actor or who would ever be an actor. and then, of course, the really hard thing of a kid who just sounds like a real person talking. kurtzleben: i was wondering a lot as i was watching this about the difference between writing for the theater, directing for the theater versus for a film because it seems like in the theater, you kind of just got to let go and let god. the actors are going to do what they do. but in a movie, you can do bajillions of takes. i'm curious about how those two different levels of control played out while you were making this film. baker: well, first of all, in a low budget movie, you can't do bajillions of takes... kurtzleben: ok. you know what? baker: ...i learned very... kurtzleben: that's fair. baker: ...quickly. so sometimes you have three takes or four takes. that said, that's an amazing thing to be able to do, and to be able to then put a bunch of different takes together   like, being able to sculpt those performances and have that kind of control and also to be able to preserve accidents. you know, it's just that incredible thing where an actor will, like, tuck a stray strand of hair behind their ear, and you can keep it and you don't have to ask them to do it again or contrive something. the thing that you don't have control over while shooting a movie, that you do in theater, is kind of a chance to see the assembly while you're still working in it. like, the fourth week of theater rehearsal, you can do rewrites. you can   you know, you can sort of, like, reconceive certain design elements. and you don't get to do that in a movie until you're done shooting. kurtzleben: i'm wondering, when did you know you wanted to be a playwright? baker: i don't quite understand or know when i wanted to do anything. i feel very compelled to make my work. i don't understand fully how it happened or how it happens. i think it's maybe a kind of amnesia that i suffer from. but i think maybe i've also kind of gifted myself with it because i try not to think too hard about my work. i sort of pretend to myself that none of it ever happened, and it's just about the next project. kurtzleben: well, with that amnesia in mind, this might be a fool's errand to ask you, when did you decide you wanted to take a run at a movie? baker: i always was drawn to the idea of making a movie, even as a kid. it actually, i think, was sort of the first thing i wanted to do because i didn't have a lot of access to theater in my small town, and i rented just a ton of movies. they also seemed like a completely inaccessible medium. it seemed like something   i don't know, a rich kid would do. it just didn't   i didn't quite understand how anybody would start making movies. and i think theater was something i kind of fell into and then totally fell in love with and, in a way, kind of had more naivete about when i started making it. kurtzleben: in this movie, lacy   she's 10 or 11. she might be too young for this to be considered a coming of age movie, but is it a coming of age movie, do you think? baker: yeah. what is a coming of age movie? kurtzleben: often, i feel like it deals with people who are, you know, 16, 17, 18... baker: right. kurtzleben: ...learning how   i don't know... baker: like, becoming an adult. kurtzleben: ...falling in love, something like that. yeah, i guess. baker: i don't think it's a coming of age movie, maybe because i don't know what coming of age means. but i do think it's a movie about a shift in perception over the course of two months and about something inside of a child shifting. i mean, that happens for our whole lives. just   you look back on a summer, winter, a year, and you can just, like, see some sort of tectonic shift, in retrospect. but to me, it's more spiritual or interior, maybe, more than coming of age, which i think might be more about being sort of launched into the world. whatever the epiphany is in "janet planet," it's very private. kurtzleben: annie baker, the writer and director of the new movie "janet planet," thank you so much for being with us. baker: thank you for your great questions. (soundbite of music) transcript provided by npr, copyright npr. npr transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an npr contractor. this text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. accuracy and availability may vary. the authoritative record of npr’s programming is the audio record.

things you buy through our links may earn vox media a commission. janet planet is in theaters june 21. janet planet is in theaters june 21. before starting filming on janet planet, annie baker and her sound designer, paul hsu, recorded two weeks of the ambient noises of the western massachusetts countryside. for the coming of age story about an 11 year old girl, lacy, and her mother, janet, baker had found the home where she wanted to set much of the movie: an angular but cozy wood cabin with large windows huddled in the forest, a droplet of civilization in the midst of the woods. “the sound of nature around this house was so incredible,” baker tells me over coffee and a sandwich at a café just south of prospect park, where she had arrived in a ’70s ish brown jacket, toting a well used orange backpack. “there were, like, bears wandering around.” baker has a mop of pre raphaelite bangs and an open smile. she’s best known as one of the foremost playwrights of her generation   a precise observer of tragicomic human behavior. janet planet is her first movie, but her enthusiasm for and knowledge of the nitty gritty processes of filmmaking are apparent. she and hsu placed recording equipment in the trees at the locations where they planned to film. the recordings were sensitive enough to pick up the sound of a bumblebee tumbling around a microphone (“it sounds like a plane,” baker tells me excitedly) as well as the other fauna roaming through the area. those recordings are the basis of the film’s soundtrack, as baker had decided to forgo a typical musical score. she and hsu combed through the reams of audio together, assembling those buzzes, chirps, the rippling of a stream, and whatever else into a soundscape that approximates how summer in new england feels. when a playwright moves to a different medium, there’s a risk their work may not translate or that they may not even try to adapt to the new language. the history of film is littered with inert play adaptations that leave you wishing the characters would walk into another room. but janet planet is a movie that could only be a movie. “from the beginning, the whole thing was suffused with filmness,” baker tells me. for one, she was intent on trying to capture the unique qualities of the massachusetts countryside. there were philosophical questions about how to depict the passage of time in childhood, for which baker felt film was a particularly good medium. “the way memory works and how time moves is so interesting to me,” she says. “it’s hard to articulate, and i think that’s why i felt like i could only explore it on film.” janet planet is set in 1991, around the time baker was growing up in the area. it unfolds across three chapters separated by relationships that janet (julianne nicholson), an overaccommodating single mother, has with the other adults in her life: her boyfriend (will patton), a friend and outdoor theater performer (sophie okonedo), and a rilke quoting director (elias koteas). each one makes lacy (zoe ziegler, an incredible newcomer) possessive in an inchoate way. lacy is introverted but forceful   the film opens with her calling janet to say she’ll kill herself unless her mom picks her up from summer camp early. janet tends to be obliging to a fault, even when men give her reason to distrust them. lacy tries to push away the people who come into janet’s life, seeming to struggle to understand why her mother might need anyone but her own daughter. in person, baker is chatty and inquisitive; she notices, mid conversation, the movements of people and nature around us, registering both when a woman at a nearby table shifts inside to get away from the sound of our interview and the red flash of a cardinal flying into a tree overhead. she speaks in the same roundabout cadence her characters often do. her early work was set in the fictional town of shirley, vermont   a place not unlike amherst, massachusetts   and includes circle mirror transformation, about an acting class, and the aliens, set among conversations between guys in an alley behind a coffee shop. those two plays shared an obie award in 2010. baker won a pulitzer prize in 2014 for the flick, a three hour epic about movie theater employees, and a macarthur fellowship in 2017. her most recent work, infinite life, in which a group of women try to relieve their ailments with liquid diets at a medical clinic, was written before the pandemic but premiered in new york in late 2023. sara holdren called it “prismlike and expansive”; helen shaw, in the new yorker, referred to it as a “dry eyed drama” that captures the unbearable. what’s true of baker’s work onstage remains in film   like that shaggy exact ear for sentences. baker is also known for her pauses, for making the audience listen to the space between the words, which adds an awareness of one’s own presence amid the spectators at a theater. on film, her actors take their time. “it was never too slow for her,” nicholson tells me. the movie often takes the perspective of a child, and one has the frequent sensation of listening through a keyhole, alongside lacy, to the inexplicable dialect of grown ups. this is not baker’s first brush with hollywood. unless you, say, write the book of a hit musical, playwriting doesn’t tend to be a financially sustainable profession. baker’s work has never gone to broadway. at this point, she supports herself primarily by teaching her craft. she has dabbled in television, developing a pilot for hbo in 2011, which didn’t go anywhere, about a b school graduate returning home to a northern california commune, and she worked in the writers’ room for i love dick. however, she found tv incompatible with how she conceives of a story. “the idea of a cliffhanger is of no particular interest,” she says. her dark comedy the antipodes imagines a writers’ room as an extractive inquisition with men demanding everyone spin their most personal confessions into content while munching on takeout and sipping lacroix. but she had always loved film   perhaps unsurprising considering the flick, in which a character treats the replacement of a 35 mm. projector with a digital one as a moral failure. she possesses what nicholson calls a near encyclopedic knowledge of the criterion collection. her influences on janet planet include maurice pialat’s 1968 l’enfance nue, which takes an unflinching approach to the story of a troubled child, and apichatpong weerasethakul’s 2010 film, uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives. weerasethakul’s dreamlike pacing, in which reality and something mystical commingle when characters reveal shocking things offhandedly, shares much with baker’s style. for more than a decade, baker had been toying with the idea of a project about a mother and daughter. she got to work on it seriously only in the spring of 2020. at that time, the premiere of infinite life had been interrupted by the pandemic. baker had just given birth to a daughter with her husband, the academic nico baumbach (brother of the director noah; baker has a small role in his film while we’re young). she suddenly found herself with a lot of time on her hands and wasn’t sure when the theater, as a form, would return. she also felt she could depict a kind of adolescent experience in film that would be difficult to perform onstage. lacy, baker’s main character, is a recognizably confident but nerdy girl. she hasn’t yet been hit with teenage self consciousness. the type of girl who had the wherewithal and self assurance to do eight performances a week probably wouldn’t have worked for the part. “i’m sure there’s an awesome 10 year old who could be in matilda,” as baker puts it. “but she wouldn’t be right for the movie.” baker spent months looking for her lacy, approaching parents and daughters on the street with offers to audition, before finding ziegler, a “little wizard” from delaware who heard about the part through a scouting email. what made her right was all her non people pleaser qualities. “when she walked into the room, she didn’t care about making us happy,” baker says. “she was uncomfortable in a crowded room and had a powerful, private dialogue with herself at all times.” nicholson, a stage and screen actress who most recently won acclaim as kate winslet’s best friend in mare of easttown, was baker’s first and only choice for the role of janet. “she embodied a kind of maternal feminine mystery that was exactly what i was looking for,” she says. and like baker, nicholson spent much of her adolescence in western massachusetts. their conversations involved a lot of reminiscing about their own experiences. both of them bought their first bras at the jcpenney in the hampshire mall in hadley, a place lacy and janet visit in the film. unfolding over the course of a single summer, the movie captures the region’s caramelized glow as well as its lost in time qualities and political history. “growing up in amherst in the ’90s, questions of counterculture were very big,” baker remembers. it was important for her to have the characters discuss a man who set himself on fire in the town square to protest the first gulf war. nicholson’s mother is an herbalist, baker’s is a psychologist, and janet is an acupuncturist. “i’m not playing my mom, and annie didn’t write janet as her mom, but the world she creates is very particular and real,” nicholson says. she remembers instinctively the kind of hug shared by herself and okonedo’s character, the theater performer   an extended moment of solace between the two old friends who are reconnecting after a long period apart. the gesture frustrates lacy, who is at that moment left out. “i used to watch my mom get those long hugs from so many people,” nicholson says. “and it made me sick!” in janet and lacy’s relationship, baker was intrigued by the question of the mother as an object of possessive, almost romantic, cross generational love. janet and lacy are close in a way that may border on the unhealthy: janet lacks discernment about the men she brings into her life, while lacy tries to force out anyone close to her mother. the movie contains a late night confession in which janet says she believes she can make any man fall in love with her if she really tries. “can you stop?” lacy asks. “i found it so sad,” nicholson says, both in the ways mothers and children always have to negotiate their own boundaries and in how the scene spoke to the perspective of a woman in that period of history. “at that time, the work was getting a man’s interest for validation,” she says. but the film does not moralize. “i didn’t have any kind of judgment on whether she was a good or bad mother. that’s totally uninteresting to me,” baker says. “the way a woman born in 1945 might relate to a woman born in 1981 is super interesting to me.” is it a question of how their outlooks have been shaped by different iterations of feminism, i ask? “there’s all of that, all of the politics,” baker says. “but also something harder to explain that i could only capture through mysterious characters.” baker conducted some of her interviews and auditions with her eventual collaborators in prospect park. we wander there after finishing our coffees and sandwiches. she points to the edge of a pond where she taped ziegler with her iphone. near the boathouse, she asks if i know the tree that looks like a house. it turns out to be a weeping beech with little doorlike gaps between its leaves, gaps i had never noticed despite years of running in the park. “here,” she says, encouraging me to walk into the house tree as we approach, “i’ll let you go experience it.” inside, it’s quiet, cool, and eerie, brown surrounded by a shield of green. i hear each dry leaf crunch under my feet. if i were a kid   and maybe even now   i would be sure it was a place of magic. a tenet of baker’s work may be that, if you zoom close enough to reality, it’s possible to discern the supernatural in its warp and weft. the effect isn’t quite magical realism, where a big enough emotion makes things burst into the extraordinary, but something more analytical: think hard enough about what we experience (and how we experience it) and the evidence says something more is afoot. her plays have always touched the mysterious through the means of the mundane, and her more recent work has tilted further toward the uncanny: in 2015’s john, a millennial couple visit a gettysburg inn teeming with an unnatural number of dolls; in the antipodes, there’s the cursed endless gloom state of the writers’ room; in infinite life, the ethereal un time of wellness. janet planet appears to hew more closely to realism, but baker allows in moments that are unexplainable. from the movie’s child’s eye view, in an almost george berkeley subjective idealist sense, the universe may as well contain magic. “i have memories from childhood where it felt like the miraculous was part of life,” baker says. “that’s what it’s like being 10. you live in an animistic universe wherein magical acts are not fanciful.” in janet planet, lacy creates little diorama like scenes with doll like objects. some were baker’s own constructions, which she dug out of storage with her mom’s help. “i made lots of tiny things,” she says. like lacy, she would arrange them into dioramas. that impulse to impute something more behind the blank mien of a doll has come to fascinate her on a philosophical level. dolls are a slate onto which we project so much imagination, the beginning of so many inquiries into religion and art. they can be a means through which a child exerts control over her universe and expresses herself, orchestrating scenes like a young theater director. yet in their blankness, they are also unknowable. a doll’s silence is of considerable importance “in a world where destiny and indeed god himself have become famous mainly by not speaking to us,” as rilke put it, which baker forwards to me over email. in addition to those little constructs lacy plays with, young annie baker had a family of troll dolls. she fabricated even smaller objects for them to consume. she would roll out the dough for a mini blueberry pie with blueberries the size of a pencil dot. “i would feed them three meals a day and then leave the room for them to eat,” she remembers. her parents were separated, and when she went to stay with her father in new york, she would ask her mother to feed them for her. could she make them breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the proper appointed hours? baker’s mother promised to do it, but as a child, baker didn’t quite believe she had listened. “i asked her recently, ‘you didn’t really feed my trolls three times a day, did you?’” baker says. “she actually did it. it makes me want to cry.” thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. if you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the june 17, 2024, issue of new york magazine. things you buy through our links may earn 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sophie okonedo, elias koteas and will patton also appear in the celebrated playwright’s first feature as writer director, set over the course of summer 1991 in rural massachusetts. by david rooney chief film critic annie baker’s remarkable plays are deceptively spare works in which very little happens in terms of the nuts and bolts of conventional drama. instead, with a keen ear for the subtle moments of quiet illumination and unexpected depths in everyday conversation, an equally attentive feel for the silences that punctuate those words and a well of compassion for people dealing with the uncertainties and disappointments of life on the fringes of modern society, she pulls you into her characters’ worlds. baker’s chekhovian powers of intimate observation have few equals among contemporary dramatists. it’s no surprise that her debut feature as writer director, janet planet, is an oddball marvel of comparable beauty, its apparent simplicity yielding an emotional weight that creeps up on you throughout. like another accomplished playwright who made a graceful transition into films this year, celine song with past lives, baker shows no signs of being a neophyte in the medium. her approach feels closer, however, in tone, humor and sharp edged poignancy to another beautifully acted recent work from a woman filmmaker, kelly reichardt’s showing up. anyone who saw baker’s pulitzer winning the flick   a micro macro study of movie theater co workers who share a generally unspoken desperation, fumbling toward connection and self understanding   will know she is highly literate in the language of film. the limpid naturalism of her writing translates seamlessly to the screen, intensifying her skill at picking up every nuance of her characters’ behavior. given that baker’s plays give the illusion of an immersive theatrical closeup, it stands to reason that a camera lens will magnify that process even further. she finds an ideal collaborator in swedish cinematographer maria von hausswolff (her visuals were a key component in the brooding magnificence of godland), shooting in what appears mostly to be available light and making effective use of static frames. the title is unrelated to the songwriter and one time van morrison muse of the same name. it refers instead to janet (julianne nicholson), a single mother and acupuncturist living in woodsy western massachusetts with her 11 year old daughter lacy (genuine discovery zoe ziegler). as the title suggests, janet is the nexus of lacy’s world, and in her bluntly self dramatizing way, the smart, spiky kid finds an excuse to bail on camp so she can greedily soak up her mother’s attention during the 1991 summer break before she starts the sixth grade. baker shows us who lacy is in a scene where the spindly, bespectacled misfit with no friends her own age seems surprised by the warm farewell of her two cabinmates, one of whom gives her a troll doll as a keepsake. when janet comes to pick her up, lacy is underwhelmed to see her mother’s boyfriend wayne (will patton) waiting by the car and instantly attempts to reverse her decision to leave. “i thought nobody liked me, but i was wrong,” she says. too bad, janet has already negotiated a partial refund. the film is divided into four chapters, three of them built around the entry into and exit from their lives of different adults over the summer. sullen, migraine prone wayne is the first, his chief redeeming quality being a daughter around lacy’s age from a broken marriage, sequoia (edie moon kearns). the day they spend together at a mall in town is a dizzying foray into a more conventional childhood, with its fast friendships, shared secrets and impromptu adventures. but it leaves lacy with questions that taciturn wayne is unwilling to answer. beyond her mother’s orbit, lacy inhabits a fantasy world that is very much her own private retreat, suspended on the edge of childhood and yet somehow hinting at a more sophisticated imagination. baker has said in interviews that her all time favorite film is fanny and alexander, which, like janet planet, is told from a preteen perspective. there could be a playful homage in lacy’s dollhouse, which is like an artsy craftsy homemade version of the children’s puppet theater seen in the opening of ingmar bergman’s semi autobiographical classic. built in a box hidden behind a show curtain, it contains weird oven baked clay and plastic figures (including the troll) that lacy feeds, puts to bed at night, and   following a performance by a hippie dippy farm based theater collective   adorns with regal headdresses made from the wrappers of the lindt chocolates her patient piano teacher (mary shultz) gives her at the conclusion of each lesson. that al fresco theatrical experience   called a “service,” not a performance by the troupe’s leader avi (elias koteas)   is a countercultural throwback with elements of music, dance, fantastical animal costumes and folkloric mysticism. it reconnects janet with the second chapter’s subject, her warm but slightly maddening old friend regina (sophie okonedo, superb), who insists the collective is not a cult but nonetheless is eager to flee from the overbearing influence of avi, with whom she has been in a relationship. regina moves in with them for a time, and lacy is drawn to the visitor’s intense energy. but when the two women get stoned and dive into a rambling conversation about motherhood and life decisions, janet gets prickly with regina for judging her. soon after, avi stops by, ostensibly to convince regina to return to the farm, though he shows more interest in janet, which leads to the third chapter. lacy studies her mother’s interactions with these people with a mix of childlike curiosity and scholarly detachment befitting an anthropologist. at times, she appropriates adult concepts like the buddhist meditations and prostrations janet learns from avi, trying them on for size. but always, she seems to be thinking about roles and relationships in ways that are mature beyond her years. some of lacy’s talks with her mother are low key hilarious, particularly because janet   in nicholson’s magnetic performance, earthy yet quietly melancholy and occasionally lost in her own head   responds to even the most melodramatic declarations with candor and seriousness. “you know what’s funny?” lacy says flatly at one point. “every moment of my life is hell.” rather than offer platitudinous reassurances that things will get better, janet emerges from a momentary absence to reply: “i’m actually pretty unhappy too.” in another revealing exchange, lacy asks, in what seems more a hypothetical question than anything sparked by inchoate desire: “would you be disappointed if i one day dated a girl?” while telling her that would be fine, janet observes that she respects her daughter’s forthrightness but had often wondered how that would work with a man. baker has described the film as a story “about falling out of love with your mother,” which is what ziegler conveys with a subtlety and emotional acuity that’s astonishing in such a young and inexperienced actor. janet shares with lacy that she’s always known she could make any man fall in love with her if she really tried, adding, “and i think it’s ruined my life.” watching lacy process that confession and continue silently reassessing the woman who has held her enthralled for her entire childhood gives the movie swirling undercurrents that are as dramatically satisfying as any of the clashes between rebelliousness and authority or the hormonal storms of puberty that punctuate the usual depictions of this transitional time in a girl’s life. ultimately, lacy seems to be setting a course for a kind of liberation that has remained elusive to her mother, no matter how solemnly janet chants about it. the movie contains no non diegetic music and even limits major camera movement to a relatively small handful of scenes. nothing distracts from the tender wisdom of its unimpeachably unsentimental gaze and the vividness of its very specific new england milieu. janet planet never goes anyplace obvious. it ends at a community contra dance, with lacy steadfastly refusing to join in, though perhaps contemplating whether she might want to in the future. the flickering play of a full spectrum of feelings across ziegler’s face in the closing shot is a thing of wonder. sign up for thr news straight to your inbox every day sign up for thr news straight to your inbox every day send us a tip using our anonymous form.

the pulitzer prize winning playwright’s muted, yet lingering, first film follows julianne nicholson’s single mother in the 90s the first shot of janet planet, like much of the pulitzer winning playwright annie baker’s debut film, hints at something ominous and grand. it’s dusk; a young girl runs down a field toward an old house, the air teeming with cricket chirps and birdsong. the long shot and soundscape are wonderfully lush and evocative, and also typical for a vast swath of the suburban to rural us. “i’m going to kill myself,” 11 year old lacy (a remarkable zoe ziegler) tells her mother on the phone, a statement that would seem horribly portentous if not for her clarification: “i’m going to kill myself if you don’t come pick me up.” from summer camp. childhood boredom, loneliness, homesickness, the arduously languid days of summer   these are the opening notes of baker’s nostalgic, suffusive film, which chooses the formative ordinary over dramatic convention at every turn. from infinite life to the flick, baker has made an illustrious stage career glimpsing the big, aching mysteries of life through its smallest and most banal of details   the everyday memories and the would be throwaway comments. janet planet, which loosely tracks the summer of 1991 in the life of lacy and her single mother janet (julianne nicholson) in rural western massachusetts, doubles down on her ethos of attention: that one need not require great tides of action, conflict or stakes to be worthy of art. and that, by nature of lacy’s blooming attention during an impressible period of her life, these details are inherently meaningful. the camera divides its time between lacy’s inchoate point of view   piecemeal, focused, strange   and on her small mantle in the world: stomping up the road to piano lessons, observing from the backseat of a car, peering out the upstairs window of her and janet’s idyllic woodland house. the film is less a story, in the conventional sense, than a series of chronological, impressive vignettes that impart the curiosity and remoteness of childhood, packed with finely observed period detail. (a trip to the local mall is especially convincing.) the chapters are delineated by interlopers into janet and lacy’s co dependent world: first wayne (will patton), janet’s gruff live in boyfriend, then an old friend regina (sophie okonedo), then a self fashioned new age mystic named avi (elias koteas). the scenes, like memory, are loose and barely tethered. they skip detail to detail, marked by their power to imprint   her mother’s earring, holding hands in the night, the brush of wind chimes as janet, an acupuncturist, sticks wayne with needles. the film’s greatest dramatic height and volume are quickly resolved side notes   the discovery of a tick on lacy’s scalp and its massacre, a migraine that reveals wayne’s distaste for her inquisitiveness. the adults go about their complicated, fraught routines and ruptures, their foibles primarily contained by nicholson’s finely restrained performance. lacy, whom ziegler plays as dry and detached, her default expression a beaked frown, observes. “you know what’s funny? every moment of my life is hell,” lacy tells her mother with a completely straight face, at once dead serious and sanguine. she expects it to pass. janet planet is a welcome rebuttal to the dominant modes of popular art   the trauma plot, or our overemphasis on narrative   if not always the most compelling to actually watch. the film feels, at times, too enamored with its framing, both its doll house of characters and lacy’s own play set. much of childhood, particularly one like lacy’s is droll and uneventful, waiting for life to start. it is a testament to baker’s skill as a writer and director that she conjures it, and also an impediment to staying fully invested for the extent of the film’s at time sagging, nearly two hour runtime. the first half of the film, perhaps in an effort to re attune the senses to the mundane, withholds much dialogue, to the point of feeling implausible and inaccessible; it is a relief when janet is supplied words in the latter half, as nicholson rends plenty of everyday, recognizable heartache out of a slow, halting late night confession. that’s as intense and dramatic, in the way that we expect movies to be, that janet planet gets. such is life   not always the most interesting, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful. you never know what will stick with you, but i expect some of this film will. janet planet is screening at the new york film festival with a release date yet to be announced

forgotten username or password? log a moderator has locked spoilers for this review press tab to complete, enter to create your diary date (if set) and watched status for this film will remain publicly visible if you change the privacy level of this entry. add members to your close friends from their profile. set your account default in settings. bonjour! the best in show crew digs into the best international feature race, with an entrée of an interview between brian, juliette binoche and trần anh hùng about their césar nominated collaboration, the taste of things. gemma, mia and brian also divulge the recipe for the international feature category and how its submissions work and briefly bring in perfect days director wim wenders as a treat. with her directorial feature debut janet planet now in theaters, pulitzer prize winning writer director annie baker and star julianne nicholson reflect with adesola thomas about the childhood nostalgia of hazy massachusetts summers. that’s the best, when you’re in dialogue with someone and you’re like, ‘we’re not going to hurt each other’s feelings. we are going to try everything and we will be honest when it’s not working and nobody will be offended.’ that’s when you can really be creative. directed by annie baker if you were often outdoors as a child in the summers, you likely remember a series of keen sensations: having your palms licked by blades of grass, the soft scrape of tree bark against flesh, sinking fingers into soil. memories of aimless warm days in july might conjure a sense of unblemished bliss. but in janet planet, pulitzer prize winning playwright annie baker’s 1991 set debut feature film, these lilting moments are complicated with one child’s formative, tender bummer summer. months before beginning middle school, eleven year old lacy (zoe ziegler) saunters in the belly of the massachusetts wood and becomes acquainted with notions of loneliness and departure, with and without the help of her acupuncturist mother, janet (julianne nicholson). throughout janet planet, janet welcomes adults into her home, expanding and closing space between herself and lacy in the process. there’s wayne (will patton), an iron wired male partner, regina (sophie okonedo), an old friend and devout theater hippie, and avi (elias koteas), a charismatic leader in regina’s new england theater scene. baker filmed this triptych of visitors and their respective acts in sequence. “we did shoot, not in scene order, but in act order,” she tells me. “we shot the wayne section, then the regina section, then the avi section with little overlaps. that’s what made sense in this schedule and with the actor schedules, but it was also fun, and actually really productive to meet the characters in order, especially for zoe and julianne.” nicholson concurs, “it was so lucky that we were able to film in that way, actually. it’s not always the case where you can film in somewhat a sequential order as the story’s being told. and it shifts because we shift depending on who we’re with who’s the important person in our life or who’s even in the room dynamics change. all three of those people are wonderful wackos, and i hope to include myself and zoe in that same category… to be with each of those people as those characters was just pure pleasure.” as refreshing as it is to see janet in her element (her own planet) and individuality beyond her obligation to lacy as a mother, baker also invites us into lacy’s loneliness: for example, she tends to a band of homemade salt and pepper shaker dolls that she clothes, speaks to and tucks into bed at night. as she witnesses her mother experience emotional intimacy with friends and lovers that come and go, lacy comes to understand that her mother does not belong only to her, that she’s an imperfect person out in the world. only in films like whale rider and where the wild things are have i seen the childhood anxieties, feelings of alienation and ardor for places be visually legitimized with such care and permission. therein evokes a curiosity and sense of danger for lacy that complicates and matures her away from the simple innocence of childhood. in a piercing moment, janet tells lacy that she’s “always had this knowledge that she could make any man fall in love with her if [she] really tried” and that “[she] thinks maybe it’s ruined her life.” it’s the sort of electrifying admission that characterizes janet’s expansive inner world, but also invites you to wonder what it means to confide or reveal such a thing to your child. nicholson comments on janet’s blurry emotional territory: “it’s very murky in there. what’s the right thing to share? what’s the right thing to hold back? i’ve said a few times, too, i feel like parenting in 1991 looks different than parenting now.” letterboxd member david writes in his review, “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.” avalyn comments, “the scene where janet starts talking about how she wonders if lacy will grow up to be a lesbian scared me so much, as if the film had been listening in on my thoughts for years. but it’s not an act of deception, a trick to shock me. it’s an electric charge in the characters, conduits for the cosmos.” sound designer paul hsu completed more than 100 hours of field recordings to craft the sonic personality of lacy and janet’s forested universe. baker and her director of photography maria von hausswolff revisited films like éric rohmer’s the green ray, apichatpong weerasethakul’s tropical malady and ingmar bergman’s melding female psyches like persona and autumn sonata. i spoke with baker about these creative collaborations, childhood and the power of place in janet planet. directed by george miller what fascinates you about mother daughter stories? are there mother daughter stories either on the stage or on screen that you really love, that really frustrate you, any that you have big emotions about? annie baker: i wouldn’t describe myself as interested in mother daughter stories, per se. i am the daughter of a mother and the mother of a daughter, and i don’t think it’s a coincidence that i started writing this movie after i had a daughter, but also it wasn’t a conscious choice. i’m trying to think of my favorite mother daughter story. no one’s asked me that. that’s such an interesting question. i really liked furiosa. i can’t say it was an influence on janet planet since i saw it last weekend, but i’m a big fan. i’m a big fan. furiosa, retrospectively influential on janet planet. there’s a way bergman photographs and thinks about motherhood and relationships just between female relatives, period, between sisters, too. and there’s a kind of sensuality, there’s a kind of eroticism to the closeness between mothers and daughters and between sisters and between friends that i think he gets at that i definitely talked about with my dp [maria von hausswolff]. what conversations did you have with zoe about lacy’s relationship to place and to her mother, if any?i learned very quickly to not try to describe the character too much to zoe, which is not to say she’s the same person or even that similar to this character, but i realized very quickly that she understood the material in a bordering on telepathic way. if i got overly psychological about it or overly analytical, i would ruin her performance. so we did not talk about the character at all; if i tried to, i saw it go wrong very quickly. she learned the lines. she showed up, she listened which is everything obviously she reacted… there was a lot of choreography. she’d never been in front of a camera before. in terms of her body and her head movements and how many times she blinked, we really had to figure a lot of the technicalities of that out. but psychology wise, she was in her own private psychological universe, which was, looking back, as it should be, for that character. how long had lacy’s line, “every day of my life is hell,” been a part of the story? when i saw janet planet at nyff, it evoked the most exciting reaction in the room that day.i know, i was really surprised! you just never know. this happens with theater, too, when you’re making something: what will make people vocally react [to], there’s just no predicting it. i was very surprised that people had such a reaction to that line. it was even [in] the first draft, definitely. i feel like kids say things like that all the time, or i did. my daughter says very dramatic things all the time, and it was really important to me that the characters say it with a kind of levity, because i feel like 99 percent of child actors, if you ask them to say that line, will say it with an enormous amount of drama and pathos, and the way zoe said that line and i think we worked on it a little it’s just an observation. she’s just making a light observation. can you speak more about working with sophie okonedo?sophie’s one of my favorite actors that i’ve ever worked with. she’s such a theater animal, too; we’ve both spent so much time in rehearsal rooms. it was actually amazing when she came to set, because there was a funny, fast and furious, witty way she likes working that feels just like spitballing in a rehearsal room together. she’s very intellectual. it was through philosophical jokes about and around the character that we found the performance together, and she’s very not precious. this is also one of my favorite things about her, and i learned a lot from working with her: if i gave her a note that she didn’t like, she would just really politely be like, “i don’t like that note. can you give me another?” i feel with other actors, you give them a bad note and you feel them freeze up and you have to backtrack or they don’t tell you… there was a clear, unforced, really transparent way she works that was, oh, my god, so, so fun. it felt like we could try really stupid stuff together and be honest with each other. i could just be like, “sophie, it’s not working,” or she could be like, “annie, it’s not working.” that’s the best, when you’re in dialogue with someone and you’re like, “we’re not going to hurt each other’s feelings. we are going to try everything and we will be honest when it’s not working and nobody will be offended.” that’s when you can really be creative. i would love to work with her again. she also has done outdoor hippie theater performances, [and] was part of a hippie theater company in her youth, so she just came right into that theater company and knew exactly what she was doing and could inhabit that world so effortlessly both the world of subtle film performance and the world of wild projecting so 200 people can hear you outside, kind of like theater acting. there’s a moment in the film where we hear lacy’s watching clarissa explains it all. i wonder, are there albums, shows, art that come to mind when you recall your own upbringing in 1990s massachusetts?what a good question. nickelodeon, definitely. nickelodeon when you’re nauseous feels really important to me: the kind of tv you watch when you’re sick, when you’re a kid. the sounds of nature in western massachusetts are a part of me, are the score for this movie. new england theater tradition was very big in my childhood, and i wanted to pay tribute to it in this movie, and that i associate with no other part of the world other than massachusetts and vermont. grape nuts were really important to me, to have the crunching of grape nuts in the movie. the moment where your parent opens the letter from the school and you find out who your teacher’s going to be next year, it really is a big deal, actually. i remember that your fate is decided and a year is so epic when you’re eleven, and finding out who your sixth grade teacher is going to be is huge. it’s everything, that moment. and i think the moments where you see someone for the last time and then years later are like, “oh, my god, that was the [last time]…” there’s that moment when sophie okonedo gets into the van with elias koteas and you sort of know that’s the last time [lacy]’s ever going to see her. there’s a bunch of them throughout the movie, these unceremonious accidental goodbyes that happened throughout our lives are a big part of, for me, remembering that time of my life. what do you want to make next?i love that question. i’m actually really excited about the thing i’m making next. i just finished two weeks ago, the first draft for a screenplay for my next movie, which is just for two actors. it’s very different, and i’m thinking about it all the time and enjoying taking everything i learned from making janet planet and putting it towards this new project. it’s very pleasurable to feel like i understand the medium a little bit better. ‘janet planet’ is now playing in us theaters, courtesy of a24. our festival correspondents have brought back a little something for everyone this year: the music of maestro, high octane hindi language action, “squelchy” stop motion and so much more in their twenty best. filmmaker kelly fremon craig knew she had a big responsibility bringing judy blume’s beloved heroine margaret to the screen, so she went with what she knew: authenticity, girlhood and love. journal is letterboxd’s online magazine. our mission is to get more films, big and small, onto your watchlists, spotlight the best writing from our community, and bring you news from our crew behind the scenes. along the way, we dig deeper into the movies we’re obsessed with, meet the people who make them, and explore the culture that surrounds them. we welcome pitches. © letterboxd limited. made by fans in aotearoa new zealand. film data from tmdb. mobile site. this site is protected by recaptcha and the google privacy policy and terms of service apply. letterboxd is an independent service created by a small team, and we 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the writer has made the leap into film with janet planet, about a mother and daughter drifting apart on a hippy commune. she talks about how it echoes her own upbringing   and why her younger self would be horrified in the back of annie baker’s office at home in new york, a spectral presence is just visible in silhouette against the window. it turns out there is not just one, but two cats hidden among the desks and shelves. baker swivels around a spare chair to reveal carla, then gestures behind. “this is bobik,” she says of the one basking in the feline window hammock. “it’s the name of an offstage character in a chekhov play.” baker is a master of the unspoken and unseen. a chekhov nut, she is one of her generation’s most lauded playwrights, telling eerily intimate stories that alight on overlooked corners of humanity. she won the pulitzer prize for 2013’s the flick, set during a cleanup at a cinema. john, from 2015, put a young couple into an eerie b&b in gettysburg run by a doll obsessed proprietor. the antipodes, from 2017, explored the glib exploitation of emotion in writers’ rooms; her latest play, last year’s infinite life, observed a group of women discussing their suffering at a pain treatment clinic in california. she also adapted chekhov’s uncle vanya in 2012. baker made her reputation on quietude and conversational dialogue: the new yorker once said she “wants life onstage to be so vivid, natural and emotionally precise that it bleeds into the audience’s visceral experience of time and space”. she is against didacticism and explanation: today we are discussing baker’s first feature film, janet planet, which she wrote and directed, but you get the sense baker would prefer to avoid talking about it at all. to read the little press she did around the us release is to witness her wince at comments she made just weeks previously. “oh, i guess i talked about that,” she sighs when i cite something from the official publicity materials. not that baker is unwilling or unfriendly. she is immensely warm and curious, and keeps a pen in her hand as if an idea could strike at any moment. “i make my work because whatever the thing is about is something i’m not able to say in words,” she says. “so then, saying it in words post fact feels really perverse!” her preference, with janet planet, would be for “people going to see it having absolutely no idea what it’s about, any expectations. but i know that’s not the way it works.” there are immutable facts about janet planet. it’s set in a hippy corner of massachusetts in summer 1991. over the school holidays, 11 year old lacy (miraculous first timer zoe ziegler, whose hawk eyed watchfulness has something of the young meryl streep) realises that her mother janet (julianne nicholson) is her own flawed person, as three prickly new figures enter their life. janet has retrained as an acupuncturist after some unnamed rupture; they live in a converted silo and attend radical folk theatre by a community group that may or may not be a cult; the name “janet planet” is one that baker, growing up in a similarly countercultural environment in massachusetts, knew well: “to me janet is a very ‘women born in the 40s and 50s’ name,” she says. “janet planet feels like a hippy nickname for a woman of a certain generation.” much as lacy clings to janet like a limpet, ziegler’s stillness brims with a barely contained horror that the two of them are slipping out of orbit and that janet is fallible. but less immutable is this potent, earthy film’s capacity for interpretation. baker has an acute ability to evoke the textures of a childhood summer, rendered in 16mm film: the fuzz of a car’s back seat, the chocolate ice cream stain on an oversized t shirt. (part of this may be down to the 36c degree heat they were sometimes filming in.) baker thinks of janet planet less as a classic mother daughter story than “a particular kind of marriage”, she says. she had the idea for the film 20 years ago, as a student. by the time she came to write it, “i still hadn’t really seen that on film before   that kind of ambivalent marriage, something that comes with darkness and romance and closeness and alienation.” lacy isn’t shy about defending her stake in their shared life: “it’s a marriage of equals with a very particular power dynamic,” says baker. (she wrote it shortly after becoming a mother, but says that’s pure coincidence.) janet’s world is one intent on finding alternative ways to feel better, yet she blunders repeatedly with lacy, exposing her to adult darknesses, which often results in the film’s funniest moments. (“what’s a cult?” lacy asks, as janet combs for nits.) “i wouldn’t have thought of that but i really like that,” says baker when i point out the contradiction between janet’s intentions and actions. “it was so important for me to have a really complicated, push pull relationship between these two women. i think this was even more true in 1991, that there weren’t really clear right or wrong ways to parent a kid. you could critique janet, but that was not interesting to me; nor was it interesting to portray a loving, cuddly, super sweet relationship. distance was really important to me   distance for me is a lot about individual sadness and struggle.” baker grew up in amherst, massachusetts, with her own separated mother. as a kid surrounded by bohemian adults, she remembers people talking about “a somatic way of thinking, or this idea of paying attention to the body and what it’s trying to tell you,” she says. “i found that way of talking and thinking kind of silly and frankly repulsive. i was a very cerebral child and young woman. now   it’s so funny   i’m really interested in talking about the body in a way that i think would have horrified me as a small child.” that sort of holistic intuition seems pivotal to baker’s approach. as a first time film director, she was remarkably hands off, not even telling her 11 year old lead what she wanted her to think and feel. how did she know the cast understood her material? “one thing i love about directing movies is that you can have a really individual process with each actor leading up to the shoot,” she says. “i really like figuring out what an actor needs.” she loved learning to direct as she went, shedding her total mastery of the theatrical realm   where she even takes the colour of the room’s seats into consideration for her productions   to be a beginner. when i ask what she thinks lacy will remember of this summer as she grows up, baker says she doesn’t think of her characters as real people so much as “aesthetic   they’re like paint brushed on my canvas”. the appeal of film making is “knowing what exact size and shape the canvas is when i start making it”. janet planet isn’t baker’s first foray into cinema. in 2015, she received support from the producer scott rudin to write a screenplay, and he invited influential people to see her plays. in 2021, dozens of his former employees alleged that he was an aggressive bully. their potential collaboration ended long before the news broke, says baker, and her screenplay didn’t reach a second draft. “i choose whether or not to continue working with people not based on what the public is saying about them,” she says. “i choose based on what i see and experience. i think the decisions you make in private in this industry are so important. being brave enough to make a decision in private about who to work with or not work with any more is everything.” it’s a little gnomic but, she says with a smile, “i think that’s what i want to say.” baker has ended up part of a big film making family: her husband, the academic nico baumbach, is the brother of director noah baumbach, who is married to greta gerwig. (despite the shared use of dolls in their work, it’s not a theme that’s sparked any conversations between the two of them, baker says.) she has a second film in the offing, to be made on 35mm in queens, new york, next year, in colder weather. but they’re not analysing ideas around the dinner table. “my work is something that is so interesting and private for me, i don’t talk about it very much with anybody in my life,” says baker. “it’s the thing i don’t have to talk about, and that’s what makes it so special for me.” never mind explanation: for baker, her work only remains compelling if even she doesn’t know exactly what’s going on in it. “the thing has to be a bit of a mystery for me to be interested in making it.” janet planet is released in the uk on 19 july

click here to read our winter 2025 issue, featuring nickel boys's ramell ross, profiles of six below the line awards season contenders and more... by erik luers in directors, features, interviews, issues, screenwriters on jun 27, 2024 annie baker, janet planet, summer 2024 for a playwright, making their feature directorial debut comes with a certain degree of anticipatory hype, and the results are evaluated with a fine toothed comb to make sure they aren’t too “wordy” or “stagey.” as with david mamet’s house of games, kenneth lonergan’s you can count on me, john patrick shanley’s joe versus the volcano or ​​celine song’s past lives, pulitzer prize winning playwright annie baker’s janet planet should put any fears to rest as to how the director would take to creating specifically for the screen. not that there should have been any doubt: her interests have long been steeped in the moving image. at 13, she attended the academy of music in her native massachusetts to see louis malle’s vanya on 42nd street, then spent her days as an nyu undergraduate patronizing film forum and discovering robert bresson’s notes on the cinematographer at her job at st. mark’s bookshop. baker’s most lauded play, the flick, was set inside a dying western massachusetts movie theater in possession of one of the last 35mm projectors in that state. set over the summer of 1991, janet planet opens with 11 year old lacy (zoe ziegler) at an overnight summer camp, desperate to come home. baldly threatening suicide in a phone call to her single mother janet (julianne nicholson) while fibbing to her fellow campers about why she has to leave, lacy might appear antisocial at the outset, but in the way she asks questions about the “larger things in life,” she proves to be curious and quietly wise beyond her years. that her deep bond with her mother might prove concerning as the pre teen gets older is an observation gently made by both janet and the viewer, but thankfully baker’s screenplay never uses their co dependency for cheap dramatic artifice. nicholson, who grew up in nearby suburban medford, massachusetts, crafts a portrait of a caring mother who’s committed to being her daughter’s guardian while making sure that lacy will grow to accept and adapt to the world she’s been brought into. even as several men and old friends played by, in order of appearance, will patton, sophie okonedo and elias koteas enter into the family’s life, the film’s honest, detailed gaze remains fixated on its two central soulmates, who just happen to be related to each other. a few weeks before the theatrical release of janet planet, which screened at the telluride and new york film festivals last fall, i spoke with baker about the transition from playwriting to filmmaking, how she cast the role of lacy, revisiting locations from her childhood and much more. janet planet is in theaters now via a24. filmmaker: you had some experience in screenwriting before janet planet, right? i believe it was through writing gigs for hire that you qualified for health insurance. baker: yeah, i’ve written a lot of screenplays for hire and even tried to write one for myself to direct, years earlier, but it ultimately ended up not being something i wanted to direct. but janet planet was definitely my experiment in writing a screenplay for myself. no one hired me to write it, and that was very important. it was a very private writing experience and an experiment in writing something in my own aesthetic as opposed to someone else’s. filmmaker: when the production was greenlit, what was your experience like of assembling a team? baker: i was doing it all for the first time. in the theater, i work almost entirely with people i know and have already worked with many times over. with this film, it was an interesting experience to have to interview people and hire everyone, from the producers to the department heads. every position had a whole process behind it, and that [experience] will never happen again. a lot of people who worked on janet planet i’d want to work with again and again, but to start from scratch was a hard but fascinating experience. i know everybody in theater so intimately, and i feel really lucky with this film, as it took a really long time. i found really great people, particularly my department heads, including my editor, lucian johnston; my director of photography, maria von hausswolff; my production designer, teresa mastropierro; my costume designer, lizzie donelan. those were really stimulating collaborations for me, and i feel lucky to have found them. filmmaker: while in pre production (or perhaps even earlier, while writing the screenplay), were you doing extensive location scouting? given your personal familiarity with the area, maybe some of the locations you settled on were obvious to you at the outset. baker: totally. i wrote a lot of the movie while staying in ashfield, massachusetts, during the summer of 2020, then, the following year, i would drive up to massachusetts at least once a month by myself to take pictures and go back to these old locations. i snuck onto the grounds of my old summer camp in the off season and timed how long it would take for me to walk down a hill, etc. it was actually all quite naïve because i didn’t understand how complicated location management is, but i really lucked out with my incredible location manager, meredith crowley. a lot of these locations were in amherst and the surrounding area and were really hard and complicated to get. i don’t mean that they were expensive to get, but that it was hard to track down a person in a rural area to ask [for permission to use the site]. it felt like the movie was dependent on these specific locations, so i spent a lot of time up there retreading old ground and taking a ton of pictures. i knew very early on that i had to find the right house [where janet and lacy live]. in 2021 or maybe even 2020, i joined nextdoor.com and started posting constantly, looking for houses. i’d also drive up to visit people and take pictures and see if i could find the right house. it was actually through nextdoor.com that i found the house we ended up using in the movie. i fell in love with it. it was sort of like meeting the right actor for a part once i’d been inside, i couldn’t picture the movie in any other house. and there were so many problems with it on a logistical and technical level! most of the windows don’t open all the way; you couldn’t fit in air conditioners. a lot of the rooms were round or slanted; most of the bedroom [doors] were locked; there were a lot of bugs everywhere. it was just a very tricky location, but it was so clear to me, once i’d been in there, that the film had to take place within that house, and i was very grateful to my producers and location manager for making it work. it wasn’t an easy shoot at that house, with no air conditioning during a heatwave in massachusetts [laughs], but they were troopers about it. filmmaker: i’m now reminded of the recurring presence of the oscillating fans in the film. baker: [laughs] yes, those very slow, semi useless oscillating fans. filmmaker: i believe you found zoe very late in the casting process. what were you looking for in casting for the role, and how did zoe fit that description? baker: i was looking for someone who had a very palpable internal life, who wasn’t trying to please me or anyone around her, who resisted sentimentality. those were the essentials i was looking for, and those are very hard to find in an 11 year old girl. if i had auditioned for a movie at that age, i would have tried desperately to make everybody like me and wouldn’t have had that kind of access to my interior, especially with a camera pointed at me. it’s a really special skill that zoe had immediately. she has a kind of privacy that’s really interesting when you can tell she’s thinking many, many thoughts and has a real searching intelligence, but you don’t know exactly what she’s thinking about. there’s this real mystery to her. it also never felt like she was trying to be cute, which i think, understandably, is what 99 percent of child actors are trying to and are probably encouraged to be. by “cute,” i don’t mean the way someone looks, obviously, i mean it [as] an affect “cute” like someone adults would like. filmmaker: did you hold any chemistry reads between her and julianne? baker: yes, it was important. julianne doesn’t live in new york, so it was important to me to only have her read with someone if i was serious about casting them. she read with one or two kids total, and zoe was one of them. i met with zoe a bunch after her first couple of auditions were on tape she lives with her family in delaware and eventually brought her to new york to work with her some more. i actually filmed her in prospect park [in brooklyn], followed her around with my iphone and had her say some of the lines from the movie while we were sitting next to a pond. i was amazed how she could sound like a real person talking very casually, in any context, and maintain control over her privacy and interiority in all of these different contexts. when julianne was in town, they read together. they were a really funny pair, and there was a kind of pain and humor in the way they listened to and talked to each other that i really liked. filmmaker: regarding the casting of the film’s other prominent roles, i know you’ve worked with will patton before [in the signature theatre’s production of baker’s play the antipodes in 2017], but what went into casting elias [koteas] and sophie [okonedo]? did you have experience with each of these actors beforehand? baker: no, but each of the actors were my first choice for their prospective parts. i’d done a play with will before and developed a real shorthand between us in the process. elias and sophie i didn’t know until i cast them. they’re super different but wonderful, and sophie, in particular, was such a joy, partly because we’re both such theater people. she’s an endlessly fascinating performer and was up for trying anything. it was really fun throwing ideas around together. each of the performers understood, on an intuitive level, the humor in my writing, which was nice, as i don’t ever want to try to get someone to be funny. that never works, at least with what i’m going [for]. the humor always needs to seep out by accident, and i felt like all of them had a really good handle on that. we never had to talk about what’s funny and what’s not. filmmaker: the film is structured by title cards, chapters even, that mark different characters’ entrance into and exit from the film. what was the reason for wanting to include those? baker: for the [structure]. i always knew that the movie would be structured through these three, for lack of a better word, usurpers [the characters wayne, regina and avi] who would enter the household and triangulate this “marriage” between mother and daughter. that was always pretty clear to me from the beginning: the structure would be three people who are somewhat disrupting the status quo. filmmaker: janet is introduced via lacy’s pov in a dryly humorous, somewhat deadpan shot of mom standing in the distance, ready to pick her daughter up from summer camp. what kinds of conversations did you have with your dp about the look and feel of your shot compositions? were there certain visual comps you had for what you were hoping to achieve? baker: i was really attracted to maria’s work before i hired her because i felt that there’s simultaneously a formality and a lot of tenderness to it. she can be very formal, but she’s never cold. a lot of our process [consisted of] spending an insane amount of time together and going to the places where we were planning to shoot. she came to massachusetts the winter before prep started, and we went to every location in midwinter. then, she came back in the summer, and we continued to spend so much time together and grew very close. we would be lying on a hilltop and taking pictures of each other. in a way, i feel like our comp for this movie was… our friendship [laughs]. we also watched a ton of movies and have very similar tastes. before we started working together, we obviously talked about ingmar bergman and maurice pialat and his l’enfance nue, which was a really important reference for lucian, maria and myself. maria and i also talked about víctor erice’s the spirit of the beehive a lot and watched several [apichatpong] weerasethakul movies. weerasethakul is my favorite living filmmaker, and it was fun to watch his movies with maria. i know this is an overused word, but maria is a really intuitive artist who responds very spontaneously to what’s in front of her. a lot of our [conversations] were just articulating our instincts to each other and finding a way through it. a lot of her movies have been shot in denmark and iceland [recent films shot by the cinematographer include hlynur pálmason’s a white, white day and godland], and i think the lush, green strangeness of western massachusetts during a heatwave became pretty interesting to her. it was fun negotiating all of that, even though it was very, very hot. filmmaker: when you mentioned weerasethakul, i was reminded of your film’s intricate sound design. if i’m not mistaken, you had someone recording those sounds prior to everyone else arriving in massachusetts that you would then implement as you saw fit in post? baker: yes, during prep our sound designer, paul hsu, first came up to massachusetts and placed this little microphone in the bushes near the house to record sound 24 hours a day. i didn’t even know you could do this. the microphone ran for two weeks and recorded sound 24 hours a day. there’s stuff we still haven’t listened to! we started shooting in late july, and paul had recorded two weeks of sound from late june to early july, at this house, in this one year [2022], 24 hours a day. it’s kind of an amazing sound document on its own. at any time, i could just say to paul, “4:45 p.m., beginning of july” and he would be able to find what it sounded like on one day at the beginning of july at 4:45 p.m. and what it sounded like on another day at 4:45 p.m. there were so many bugs and birds surrounding that house, and that was one of the reasons i wanted the house so badly, as the sounds were intense and almost overwhelming. i knew the movie wasn’t going to have a traditional score, so having all those tapes to work with was really helpful. we tried to be seasonally specific, too; [i.e.,] peepers only come out at certain times of year. we were careful, probably bordering on overzealous, but it was fun working with paul that way and, i think, important because the animals really are the score of the movie. filmmaker: i have to ask about a sequence early in the film, in which janet and lacy accompany wayne to a mall so that he can spend time with sequoia [edie moon kearns], his daughter, who is roughly lacy’s age, from a previous marriage, and how you found that early ’90s, period specific mall. following your shoot, i believe the mall has since permanently closed? baker: not only that, it has been demolished to the ground! there’s nothing there. that mall was there while i was growing up. since [the film’s] production budget was for the house, we didn’t really have a budget to secure any other location, so finding a mall was going to be really tricky. we could only shoot for a very, very brief period of time in this mall, like six hours, and there was no budget or time to production design it. we just got lucky that the inside of this mall looked like it’s 1991. i mean, we obviously had to remove some flashing led screens and an iphone stand and things like that, but it was pretty minimal. we got in there, grabbed a bunch of stuff, pushed it to the side and started shooting. there’s no vfx in regard to the signage you see; it really is what was there when we arrived. it was also really important to me to film in a mall that had a fountain, as i wanted the sequence to be as romantic as two people falling in love in rome, so i was like, “we need a fountain, and it has to be a beautiful fountain.” there used to be so many of those types of malls, but now there are very few malls with working fountains. i was so happy to film that beautiful, crazy fountain in the mall, and now it doesn’t exist anymore! i guess it’s a tribute to this thing that everybody complained about in the ’90s that now seems kind of sweet. filmmaker: you mentioned ingmar bergman earlier. you’ve previously said that the best film ever made about being a kid is fanny and alexander. reminded of how that movie involves puppetry and theatrical performance, albeit somewhat differently than in janet planet, i wanted to ask about the more theatrical aspects of your film. for instance, in one sequence, janet and lacy watch an outdoor performance that feels inspired by bread and puppet theater, a radical puppet theater based in glover, vermont, which i know was an influence on you. baker: i wanted to pay tribute to a certain kind of theater aesthetic i hadn’t seen on screen before. i felt really happy and lucky to be working with those puppets [in the film], and maria and i both liked shooting them so much that we fantasized about making an entire film with only puppets at some point down the line [laughs]. we worked with this amazing puppeteer who lives in ashfield, jeremy louise eaton, and they’re all her puppets. [eaton most recently served as design director of the artist owned double edge theatre in ashfield.] she and i were in conversation for over a year before we started shooting, so a lot of care and thought went into that theater performance, only a fraction of which ultimately ended up in the movie. we actually devised and rehearsed quite a long theater performance, but only a small part of it made it [into the film]. it was definitely my favorite day of shooting, though. i think there’s something so singular about and this is not just specific to an organization like bread and puppet a kind of rural, back to the land, political theater aesthetic. there are a number of these companies still in existence, and many more that used to be, throughout new england, and artisans at these companies making incredibly beautiful work. it was a joy to be part of it briefly. filmmaker: did the puppetry also inspire the poem avi reads to janet on their picnic late in the film, the one that references angels and puppets? baker: yes, from the beginning i knew that poem would be in the movie. it’s the fourth duino elegy by [rainer maria] rilke and, to me, that poem captures some kind of ambivalent spirituality of childhood, and the feeling of being watched and being the watcher. that poem speaks to a kind of spiritual confusion i felt as a kid more than any other poem i’ve ever read, and it’s also a poem about the theater, which was really important to me. in many ways, the poem feels like it’s the center of the movie, and it was important that [its inclusion] be a kind of incantation, a kind of spell, in the movie. filmmaker: did you always want to have the reading of the poem be cross cut with shots of lacy at home alone? the cross cutting really emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between mother and daughter. baker: we always knew it was going to be symbiotic, yes. regarding the amount of cross cutting, we had like 17 million different versions [of that sequence]. there are even versions where certain things happened on screen and certain things happened offscreen, but how much we were going to let “the miraculous” be witnessed on screen and/or happen offscreen was a big question for us in the editing room. filmmaker: without revealing too much, the film closes in a dance hall with an extended shot of lacy sitting alone by herself on the sidelines. the final shot, framed tightly on zoe’s face, is one i feel could’ve taken days to get. baker: we didn’t have time! filmmaker: not having any time will certainly speed up the process! that intimate moment is a powerful way to end the movie and has such a lasting effect on the viewer, even though i’m sure it was done very quickly. baker: thank you for saying that. there was barely any rehearsal, and it was done very quickly. i just said a lot of things to zoe to prepare and had her watch [the other performers]. while we were working on it, i realized that she had to be watching people dance; we couldn’t summon that from having her look at a blank wall. we had just finished shooting the contra dance with the dancers themselves and the band but asked a small group of dancers to come back. they were five or six very sweet people who had wrapped for the day, but they came back to dance, silently, in front of zoe to get her [reaction]. while we were getting the shot, i said a lot of weird stuff to her [laughs]. [beforehand] i had been putting a lot of darker, sadder thoughts in her head, and those were [turning the scene into] a really bleak moment. but i think the thing i said in that moment that caused zoe to think whatever thoughts she’s thinking at the end of the movie was to “imagine yourself dancing, just imagine yourself out there, dancing.” i think that melancholy but hopeful imaginative leap behind her eyes is what is happening in the last seconds of the movie. filmmaker: taking the reins as a first time feature director, did you have the experience of “finding the film” in the edit? did it change at all from your assembly cut onward? baker: oh yeah, the assembly was about 2:45 [two hours and forty five minutes]. so, we cut almost an hour off of it. it’s funny because, while the script was 67 pages, the assembly was 2:45. i’ve learned that my screenplays are exactly like my plays in that they’re three minutes a page, not a minute a page. my play the aliens was only 70 pages, so everybody thought it was going to be a really quick one act, but it’s two and a half hours if you do it right. theoretically, i was ok with making a two hour and 45 minute movie, but that wasn’t actually what it wanted to be. that’s one of the amazing things about the editing process: the movie becomes this strange living organism that is rejecting certain scenes and asking for others. it’s like an animal you have to simultaneously tame and listen to. one of the things i love about editing is how unpredictable it is. you get a great idea in the middle of the night, implement it the next morning and it’s just terrible. you then get [another] great idea in the middle of the night that you try the next morning, and it fixes a whole crisis. you don’t know until you try it. more than any other thing i’ve ever done, i can’t solve something like that in my head. i’ve staged entire plays in my head, but you can’t cut a movie in your head, or i couldn’t, at least, my first time around. filmmaker: now that the film is out in the world, have you found there to be a difference between sharing a work with an audience in the theater, where it’s more of a live document every single night, as opposed to a film where you’re done with it? baker: it is different, but in both cases, by the time the thing is done, i have moved on completely in my life. i’m sort of ruthless with myself. i never reread my plays. i don’t think about them. i don’t want to think about janet planet anymore [laughs]. the second i’m done, i have to move on or else my life is unbearable, and i’m always thinking about the next thing. so, i just walk around now thinking about my [upcoming] queens movie, and that’s what’s alive inside of me now. that’s what holds possibility.
supported by mood board the playwright annie baker shares the artistic influences behind her feature film debut. by robert ito annie baker has amassed multiple awards for her idiosyncratic and deeply observed plays, including the pulitzer prize for her 2013 drama “the flick.” baker has always loved the movies   “the flick,” about three young workers sweeping up popcorn and discussing movies in a broken down central massachusetts theater, is something of an ode to the cinema   but has never directed a film before now. “janet planet” (in theaters) tells the story of the relationship between janet (julianne nicholson), a single mother and acupuncturist, and lacy (the newcomer zoe ziegler), her 11 year old daughter, who is slowly coming to the realization that her mom, once the radiant center of her life, is maybe human after all. “i do think i was writing about a marriage of sorts between a mother and a daughter,” she said. in a video call from a friend’s place in brooklyn, baker talked about the films, artists and music that inspired her cinematic debut, from the french painter édouard vuillard’s portraits of his seamstress mother (“he’s my favorite painter of the color brown”) to the novels of thomas mann. during production, baker found herself returning to vuillard’s portraits of his mother, with whom he lived for much of his life until her death in 1928. “there’s this tender, ambivalent relationship to the woman in a lot of the paintings,” baker said. “you see the back of her head, her face is half obscured, or her hands are oddly askew.” in the film, we see things from a similar point of view: lacy inside a car talking to the back of janet’s head, or staring at her mother’s profile while lying alongside her in bed. “that’s a big part of ‘janet planet’: looking at your mother, and observing what she looks like to you in different contexts and in different phases of life,” she said.

 by jonathan mandell annie baker is making her feature film debut as a writer and director some fifteen years after making her new york stage debut as a playwright, and i almost laughed at the déjà vu of it. “janet planet,” currently streaming on max, reminds me of her plays not so much for the film’s setting, and not its basic subject, but for her similar approach to storytelling   and, above all, for the extreme and extremely varying reactions to it. “the remarkable writer director..announces her big screen ambitions with stunning force,” writes tim grierson in screen daily, reflecting what seems to be the majority opinion from film critics. “ultimately, the movie is really boring,” writes kaely monahan in the arizona republic, a minority but not unique view. “janet planet” is set in the summer of 1991, in a rural area of western massachusetts. eleven year old lacy (zoe ziegler) is supposed to be spending the summer at camp, but in the first scene she calls her mother on a payphone to tell her: “i’m going to kill myself if you don’t come get me. ”her mother janet (julianne nicholson) obliges, and the rest of the two hour movie is their summer together interrupted (as lacy might word it) by three visitors in a row, each presented as a separate chapter. there is janet’s taciturn boyfriend wayne (will patton), only the latest apparently of her bad choices in men; lacy advises janet to break up with him (and she does.) then there is regina (sophie okenedo) an old friend of janet’s and an actress who takes refuge in jane’s house from avi, the amiable, cerebral if cult like director of the bread and puppet like acting troupe of which regina is a member; regina is something of a free spirit and a freeloader, and she and janet have a falling out.