I saw Janet Planet on Monday, July 1, 2024 at San Diego’s Fashion Valley Mall with Luke and our friend, Jo. More specifically, at 7:20pm. The three of us, alone in the theater, had only a vague idea of what we were in for. “It’s about a girl and her mom,” Luke explained. That could have meant anything.
About twenty minutes in, I started feeling very grateful that we picked the 7:20 showing as opposed to the 8:45 at the theater closer to our home. Janet Planet is a very slow, quiet film — not preferable for most audiences. I try to approach indie films with an open mind, so I settled with the fact that there was a good chance it was never going to end louder or faster than it began. I was correct.
In the world of Janet Planet, this soft tone is appropriate. The A24 synopsis reads:
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.
Janet Planet is, for lack of a better term, a very cerebral movie. I’d say I enjoyed it on the first watch, but the truth is revealed in the fact that I’ve thought about it quite frequently in the past week. Pieces of the film are scattered around my mind: their beautiful home, Lacy’s music box, red Lindor truffles. I’d love to see it again.
There are lots of movies based on books. There are fewer books based on movies. As a writing practice, I’ve always wanted to try the latter. For this trial run, I took a scene from Janet Planet and attempted to write it in narrative form. I’m not sure if my interpretation of the scene is accurate, but I’m satisfied with the attempt nonetheless. To start, I’ve included the song that plays behind the scene to hopefully help set the tone. If you can read this from a cabin in a heavily wooded area of the midwest, that’s ideal. If not, a simple summer afternoon is fine. To conclude, I’ve input the link to a clip of the scene in reference, so you can judge for yourself if my efforts were worth it. Thank you for reading.
Mom was experiencing a spark, an epiphany, a curiosity. She was pacing around the living room between the window and the armchair, wiping glistening patches of sweat from her temples. “Who’s to say, but me, whether it’s a bad decision?” she posed.
Regina followed up with a definitive retort, “Yeah, but objectively, you do make bad decisions.”
“Well, who knows?” Mom said, more of a reach for rhetorical relatability than a legitimate question. Regina treated it as the latter.
“Well, you know,” Regina said. She was sitting on the head of the sofa, her feet on its seat. Mom’s eyebrows tightened. “I mean, I know,” Regina continued, “We know when we know.” Mom stepped back.
Her voice hardened slightly, and the frog in her throat crawled upward. “But I’m saying — maybe we don’t.”
Regina paused, frozen in the conversation. I saw the light bouncing off her forehead, her nose, her bare shoulders. The small fan in the corner whirred and panned around the room, keeping time with the cicada’s summer orchestra. “Yeah, yeah,” she nodded. “Okay.” She looked away from Mom and down to the coffee table. “Okay.” Her solemn expression lasted only a moment before her eyes lit up behind her circular frames. A thought emerged. “Okay, but —” she started. Her tongue slipped between her lips to break up a smile. “Also, and I mean this with love,” her demeanor changing to declare a seriousness I had not yet seen from her, “don’t kid yourself, Janet.”
Mom wasn’t moving anymore. In fact, she stood blankly, hanging onto Regina’s words. Regina, who Mom knew when I was a baby; Regina, who was the radiant star at the community performance; Regina, who cried outside the barn while Mom hugged her; Regina, who moved in with us last week; Regina, who taped a cover of “The New Yorker” magazine onto the wall; Regina, who passed something to Mom an hour ago that was supposed to help them sleep.
The three of us, in the living room, heating up.
“Don’t kid yourself, Janet.”
She pressed her thumb between her fingers. Her head shook once, “I mean—”
She looked up at Mom, staring her down. “You know.”
nat biendara 