One of the funniest and most heartwarming scenes in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker's debut novel, Janet Planet, is when 11-year-old Lacey (Zoe Ziegler) asks her mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), if she will be disappointed if she dates a girl one day She asks her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) if she would be disappointed if she dated a girl someday. Lying in bed side by side and beginning to doze off, Janet says of course not. Then, after a few beats of silence, she becomes more alert and says frankly, " I always wondered if you would grow up to be a lesbian." Janet explains that she can't understand how someone as headstrong as Lacey could date a man, and Lacey astutely points out that she has only ever seen Janet date men.

Written and directed by Baker, who has directed acclaimed plays ("Circle Mirror Transformation," "The Flick," "Nocturna") for over a decade, "Janet Planet," released by A24, is a sober consolation prize for a large dose of somber emotion film and one of the best dramas of the year, set in 1991 in western Massachusetts (now in theaters nationwide), the film is about Lacey's apathetic summer and how her bohemian mother moves through the world and the many people (from s s boyfriend to old friends) who come and go in it, and her The film depicts her attentiveness. Most important, however, is a tender meditation on the relationship between mothers and daughters, and especially on how mothers see us and how we see our mothers unlike anyone else.

Janet Planet begins with Lacey slipping out of her bunk at summer camp and making a phone call. She tells her mother, who is supposed to be there to help her by morning, in a matter-of-fact tone, "If you don't come get me, I'm going to kill myself." Rather than encourage Lucy to stay, Janet drives her home without question. This seems to be because she values Lucy's autonomy and at the same time trusts that one day Lucy will get to a place where she does not need to make phone calls.

A large part of Janet Planet is built around how perceptive Lacey is to the world. She has her quirks, but they are not necessarily clichés of a precocious child. Rather, she epitomizes the kind of intelligence that is characteristic of girls before they enter middle school or reach puberty: invincible, proud to be curious, and unencumbered by shame. When she observes Janet, or observes the outdoors with her distinctive quiet gaze through her wire-framed glasses, she asks bold, pressing questions and is fervently observant.

Janet sees Lacey in the same way. At one point she told another adult that she felt as if her daughter was always observing her, even when she was not around. She is also not afraid to talk to Lacey like an adult. When Lacey hysterically points out that every moment of her life feels like hell: the repeated piano lessons, the lonely bike ride to the ice cream stand, the melancholic days lying around the house trying to beat a boring summer, Janet says, "It goes on I don't think it will, though," she says. Later, Janet muses to herself that she feels like she can make any man fall in love with her, and that her nature is ruining her life. Lacey listens to it, maybe because she already understands it and sees it in her mother, or maybe because she wants to at least try to understand it and thinks she can.

There are many excellent films about the mother-daughter relationship and its unique comfort and frustration. Janet Planet may be a small story, but it shows how much the world between mother and child can expand when intimacy helps people grow. That's what makes it feel so special. It always reminds us of even the most trivial things we might notice about our own mothers. Moments when you look back and see that your mother had a girlhood that you will never know, or your own summer when you were 10, 11, or 12 years old. The film also feels unique in that it empowers girls of Lacey's age, who are rarely talked about in such depth. Baker brings you even closer to that orbit, and in Janet Planet, it's a beautiful place to be.