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Janet Planet Will Grow on You
Annie Baker’s coming-of-age film features a career-best performance from Julianne Nicholson as a crunchy single mom living in Western Massachusetts.
The first time I saw it, I enjoyed but didn’t feel particularly moved by the ways its young main character, who contrives to come back early from camp, spends the summer as a kind of tourist in her own home — a visitor to the realm of her mother’s grown-up life. A scene in which Janet gets high with Regina (Sophie Okonedo), an old friend seeking refuge from the experimental-theater commune she’s been living in, gets a laugh out of how long it takes to reveal that Lacy’s been in the room the whole time, just out of frame. Baker has cited Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives as one of her influences, though while the films share a syrupy dreaminess scored by a soundtrack of buzzing insects and chirping birds, Janet Planet keeps both feet planted in the real world.
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