This weekend’s recent warm weather brought a sense of happiness and abundance to campus. There’s a tangible feeling of community and merriment on days like this, and it feels special to get to be in a place as beautiful as Vassar as the sun sets a little later every day and we can slowly shed sweatshirts for shorts. One of my favorite parts of warmer weather, especially on the East Coast, is the hum of the cicadas coming out at night and nightfall’s cooling breezes after a day spent in the hot sun. The experience feels mystical, especially in late August when school is around the corner and everyone knows that the magic is almost over. I think the fascination of summer is so easy to imagine, yet so hard to explain or describe, because of its universality. Recently, though, I watched Janet Planet, a movie that follows the relationship between a girl named Lacy and her mother Janet, and I felt that it summed up summer marvelously well.
Set in 1991, the movie is divided into three parts for each of Janet’s friends or lovers who come into Lacy and Janet’s lives throughout the summer. Although the movie spotlights themes of independence, attachment, growing up, and parent-child relationships, I thought the best parts of it were in the vivid representation of how summer feels as a child. The movie begins with Lacy getting picked up from camp because she thinks the other kids don’t like her. In the scene of them driving home with Janet’s boyfriend, Lacy’s hair blows in the wind of the open window, her head tilted back on the upholstered seat of the car as folk music plays on the radio. She watches her mother in the passenger seat in front of her as the sun catches glimpses of her hair and eyelashes, earrings swinging from the movement of the vehicle. The green trees behind her invite the viewer to smell the blooming flowers and pollen in the air, recalling childhood memories of the hot backseat of a car.
Later on, the three of them eat dinner together on the back porch of Janet and Lacy’s house. The dusk sunlight hits their hair and the wooden banisters of the deck as birds chirp and utensils scrape on plates. This scene reminds me of summer house parties in my parents ’ friends’ backyards, finding other children to play with, and making up a game requiring leaves or sticks and hiding rocks.
My favorite part of the movie is when Janet and Lacy go to see a puppet show led by a troupe of actors. The puppets are made of huge papier mache forms, decorated with feathers, yarn, and strings. Their show is accompanied by live music with clarinets, drums, horns, and cowbells, as instrumentalists improvise to personify the characters. As the night progresses, the show becomes increasingly beautiful, featuring orbs of light and intricate costumed performers singing and dancing in huge white ball gowns. The audience feels a childlike sense of wonder and confusion about the whole thing, as Lacy’s character exemplifies.
I thoroughly encourage you to watch Janet Planet if you have not already. It’s a perfect movie to welcome the warmer weather and reminisce about childhood memories of summers past. Although it moves slowly, I think this is part of its charm, and its wonderful ending makes the methodical storytelling completely worth it.
Watch the trailer here!