Janet Planet is a Story of Queer Tweenage Years — And We Love It
By Ethan Katz
The first two minutes of Annie Baker’s film debut, Janet Planet, are quiet. To those familiar with Baker’s dramatic writing, this is no surprise. But the quiet is shocking nonetheless, a strange and unfamiliar experience in a movie theater. Yet, undeniably beautiful. And nearly impossible to look away from.
Janet Planet is about 11 year old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) and her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) as Janet navigates relationships with three house guests. First, her mom’s boyfriend, Wayne, who is an older, quiet, and angry man who doesn’t seem to like Lacy all that much. Second, an old friend, Regina — the most talkative of the bunch, who Janet reconnects with at a performance or “service” of a local cult meets theater-troupe. And finally, the cult leader, Avi — who Regina had initially stayed with Janet to hide from.
After the initial couple minutes of quiet stills, Baker’s first moment of dialogue is Lacy threatening to kill herself if her mom doesn’t come pick her up early from sleepaway camp. When her mom does come to pick her up, another girl gives her a troll as she says goodbye. “That’s so nice,” Lacy says. “I don’t wanna go.” Lacy tells her mom she has changed her mind and wants to stay. “I thought nobody liked me but I was wrong.”
In many ways, Lacy’s experience of childhood is the complete opposite of mine — she’s an only child with a single mom living in a very rural area. And yet, there is a gem of universal truth glimmering at the center of the story, a love letter to the tweenage years and to queer mother-daughter relationships and dependence. And it is completely impossible to look away from.
Part of this is Baker’s incredible ability to capture the seemingly peripheral moments of life. Lying or making stories up as a child to make your life seem more interesting (like when Lacy lies to the other kids in camp about her mom’s boyfriend being in a motorcycle accident). The way Lacy eats her favorite food, frozen blintzes, almost like she kind of hates them. Little things like forgetting words, long silences, unanswered questions — these have always been staples of Annie Baker’s work and Janet Planet is far from an exception. The movie is chock-full of all the lovely little silences of life — a mother watching her daughter practice the dreadfully repetitive piece she is learning on piano that week. A house at night. A walk through the woods. Watching other people hug.
The title, Janet Planet, comes from Lacy’s mother, who is an acupuncturist. The sign on her door says “Janet Planet.” But the story is told entirely through Lacy’s eyes. There’s only one moment in the film where Lacy is not present. She watches as Regina breaks her mother’s heart by challenging her notion that there could be no such thing as a bad decision. “Objectively, you do make bad decisions,” she says. Lacy is there to come home to Avi talking to her mother while Regina is at work. She even watches her mother and Wayne sleep, legs intertwined. The lone moment outside of Lacy’s gaze is the final moment between Janet and Avi, walking and having a meal on the grass together. In one moment, Avi is there, telling Janet that he really likes her, reciting a portion of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies. The next, he’s gone. Janet goes back to her car and eats a leg of chicken they’d brought for the meal. Without Lacy’s loving and constant gaze, the rest is missing.
Janet Planet is, as all of Baker’s work, most interested in what we omit. Lacy has figurines she feeds. She feeds them, she makes hats for them out of red Lindt wrappers. She watches them. And she puts them to sleep, sideways or on their backs, some even with blankets, and closes the curtains. As if it were a play.
“What are we even talking about when we talk about mothers?” Regina asks Janet, about halfway through the movie. “What are we even talking about?”
Janet teaches Lacy how to do prostrations, something that Avi taught her. Lacy doesn’t like Avi, and she squints at him throughout the whole movie with her ever-critical eye. But towards the end of the movie, when Janet is out on a walk with Avi, Lacy does prostrations in front of her figurines, doing the movements but saying nothing.
“Can I hold your hand?” Lacy asks her mom, lying in bed with her one night. Lacy watches her mother cycle through one relationship after another, a seemingly endless string of bad, depressing men. “It’s kind of hard for me to fall asleep when we’re holding hands,” Janet responds. After agreeing to hold hands for just a minute, Lacy tells her that “every moment” of her life is “hell.” Of course, these kinds of comments — this, threatening to kill herself at camp — upset her mother. But after a moment, Janet, too, concedes, “I’m actually pretty unhappy too.” She lets go of Lacy’s hand.
One of the most moving parts of this movie, for me, were the threads of queerness running through it. Early in the movie, Janet meets Wayne’s daughter, Sequoia. They meet at the mall and Sequoia teaches Lacy a language game, or a new language — something that was a pinnacle of many of my own queer friendships as a child. Lacy tells Janet and Wayne that she usually has trouble making friends but that she really wants to be friends with Sequoia. She repeatedly asks why Sequoia doesn’t live with Wayne ever. And she mourns the loss of the potential friendship when Janet finally breaks up with Wayne after he lashes out at Lacy. “The worst part of this for me,” Lacy tells her mom after the breakup, “is that I really wanted to see Sequoia again.”
A bit later on, when Lacy asks her mom if she would be disappointed if she dated a girl one day. “I’ve always wondered if you might turn out to be a lesbian,” Janet responds, citing Lacy’s “forthrightness.”
The movie ends with a contra dance. Janet seems to have come to “meet people,” and Lacy agrees to be dragged along as long as she can sit on the side. Lacy watches her mom switch from person to person, circling around and around and around. Watching her going further and further away into the cosmic space of the contra dance. An older butch lesbian sits next to Lacy and asks her if she wants to dance. Lacy shakes her head no, but her face starts to fill with emotion, not quite knowing how to separate herself from her mother. “You sure?”
About the Author
Ethan Katz is second year at Oberlin College in Oberlin, OH, where he is studying creative writing & theater. He is grateful to have been introduced to the opportunity to write for Matthew’s Place through the Be a Friend Project.
