David Nicholson

I liked this movie but I don't recommend this movie. Janet Planet is about a single mother raising a young girl in Western Massachusetts in the very early 1990s. The mother is a acupuncturist. While the mother loves her daughter, and displays good self-awareness, she's also prone to terrible choices in her relationships, melancholic and strangely inert. The daughter is smart without being precocious, honest, intensely introverted, appropriately whiny for her age and more than a little manipulative. Both characters are played beautifully with nuance and perception. The relationship between this mother and daughter is shown to be both loving and unhealthy. The detail in the scenes and the carefully written dialogue gives rare depth to the mother and daughter. The characters surrounding these two are similarly well sketched: a quiet man you can tell is bad news, a bitter leech of a "friend" and a charlatan-esque commune leader. Janet Planet is very, very specific in its time and place. The film was all shot on location, the costumes and sets are extremely accurate depictions of Western Mass in 1990. I grew up in Western Mass around this time and this film captures the vibe of the place very well (think rustic Portlandia). The movie is extremely slow and contemplative. It features lots (LOTS) of extended close-ups of faces. Not much happens. This movie is not about plot, it's about these characters and this place. Your tolerance for this will understandably vary. You'll either find it detailed and thoughtful or pretentious and anodyne. Again, I liked it, but I can't recommend it. Proceed with caution.