Ian LoCascio, JBFC Programming Coordinator writes: “I’ve long considered Annie Baker, best known for her Pulitzer Prize winning play The Flick, to be one of our greatest contemporary playwrights. Baker has always had a cinematic flair—with the films of Chantal Akerman, Éric Rohmer, and Andrei Tarkovsky serving as key influences on her plays—so it felt natural that, eventually, she would make the transition from the stage to the silver screen; and with Janet Planet, Baker’s filmmaking debut, I was thrilled to find a master of her craft embrace a new medium with the same confidence, empathy, and quiet profundity as in her finest work for the stage. Janet Planet is an extraordinary film, one which hasn’t left me since I first saw it nearly nine months ago, and I’m so excited for us to share it with you when we open the film at the JBFC on June 28th.”
In rural Western Massachusetts, 11-year-old Lacy spends the summer of 1991 at home, enthralled by her own imagination and the attention of her mother, Janet. As the months pass, three visitors enter their orbit, all captivated by Janet and her spellbinding nature. In her solitary moments, Lacy inhabits an inner world so extraordinarily detailed that it begins to seep into the outside world. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker (The Flick) captures a child’s experience of time passing, and the ineffability of a daughter falling out of love with her mother, in this singularly sublime film debut.
