Janet Planet

The debut feature from playwright Annie Baker (The Flick, Infinite Life), Janet Planet shares all the richness of character and closely-observed dialogue from her theatrical work, while also bringing a lush cinematic quality to this tale of 1990s Massachusetts. Eleven-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) phones her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) from summer camp, with a demand that she return home for the summer. That puts her in the house with Janet’s questionable boyfriend Wayne (Will Patton), but also Lacy’s private collection of trinkets to which she pays daily tribute. Across a seemingly endless summer, we see Lacy closely observe the adults around her to look for clues to how to grow up, from free-spirited actor Regina (Sophie Okonedo) to charismatic director Avi (Elias Koteas).

An astonishing performance from its child star is matched by a mesmerising co-lead by Julianne Nicholson (Mare of Easttown, August Osage County). With the slightest jut of her chin, Ziegler is able to conjure up the nervousness as she stands in the doorway of her coming of age. But the coup of the film is to honour the fact that life is a series of comings of age, and the deeply investigated characters show how we follow and stray from our parent’s path.