“Janet Planet” and “Daddio” mark the emergence of serious filmmaking talent

In a strange coincidence, two films by playwrights making their directorial debuts this weekend will premiere in the Boston area. “Janet Planet,” which has been earning rave reviews on the festival circuit since last fall, is the first film from Amherst owner Annie Baker, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for “The Flick,” a three-hour drama about a run-down Worcester theater that was like “The Last Film Show” in the era of indifferently maintained multiplexes. Christy Hall’s “Daddio” doesn’t arrive with as much hype, but it’s a minor miracle of a movie, adapting two characters’ conversation to incredibly moving ends. Both films herald the emergence of serious filmmaking talent.

A portrait of a mother seen through the eyes of her daughter, “Janet Planet” is an evocative souvenir during which the entire universe appears in grays and spots. Eleven-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) lives with her single mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) in the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts. Because they are extremely close, they usually sleep in the same bed at night, and mom tends to share personal things that her daughter probably doesn’t need to know about yet. The film takes place in the summer of 1991, after Lacy demands to be brought home early from camp because he hates it and thinks he has no friends, leaving him with nothing to do except hang around the house for long, idle, sunny days days. wet days.

We see glimpses of Janet’s friendships and failed relationships, all from Lacy’s perspective. The bad boys leave the movie with cheeky title cards like “End Wayne.” The eccentricity of the region’s hippie milieu is used in a playful way, emphasizing the strangeness of Janet’s acupuncturist era’s new circle without resorting to caricature. (Baker’s Western Mass. may be a cousin to Kelly Reichardt’s Portland, Oregon.) The outside world is a strange and confusing place – not to mention tick-infested – so Lacy prefers to stay indoors, arranging her toys and dolls into dioramas in a makeshift proscenium, perhaps heralding the career of a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright?

I’m not sure how clearly autobiographical “Janet Planet” is supposed to be, but many of these scenes have the specificity of lived experience. An early, particularly Proustian trip to the Hampshire Mall evokes the majesty of indoor fountains and the wonder of Waldenbooks. I’ve never seen a movie gain so much popularity with the JCPenney banner.

As in Baker’s plays, the silences are long, the dialogue oblique. The Medford-born Nicholson is a natural fit for the screenwriter, embodying the film’s minimalist aesthetic with understated precision. (She’s been an indie filmmaker’s secret weapon since 2000’s “Tully,” and no one has yet caught her “acting.”) The owlish Ziegler is a fascinating discovery, a tiny Carol Kane made entirely of right angles. The women of “Janet Planet” are so reserved and self-possessed that the men can’t help but seem awkward and pleading in their presence. The great Will Patton and Elias Koteas appear as suitors who, with varying degrees of success, try to woo Lacy’s mother, strange, hairy intruders who stay in the picture until they’re gone.

“Janet Planet” can be a frustrating picture at times. Baker’s penchant for long, real-time performances doesn’t always translate as well to the screen as it does to the stage, where deliberate boredom carries with it a very different electricity. But the film has a clever cumulative effect by putting us in Lacy’s shoes as she understands the situation. The final scene is downright riveting, skillfully using dance to show us a shy young girl who finally begins to understand the adult world that literally swirls around her. She’s finally ready to join in.

I think one of the hardest things to explain to young people today is how much Sean Penn meant to us in the ’80s and ’90s. Penn was an incredibly electrifying person back then; the surly, chain-smoking, anti-social antidote to the freshly scrubbed Herd Brother and heir to De Niro and Pacino’s Method mantle. Since then, he has become such an appallingly obnoxious public figure that Penn is somehow able to generate ill will by engaging in a whole host of heroic, humanitarian actions. Plus, the movies he’s making now are mostly bad, which is why the terrible title “Daddio” is such a pleasant surprise. This low-key two-hander stars Penn and Dakota Johnson, another talented actress who hasn’t been very good in her roles lately. She plays a woman returning to New York after traveling home to visit her estranged sister in Oklahoma. Penn plays the talkative taxi driver who picks her up at the airport.

And that’s all; that’s the story. First-time director Christy Hall adapted the film from her own play, and fortunately she doesn’t try to cheat it with any attempts at “opening up” or changing the location. Take two great actors sinking their teeth into a meaty script and you’ll love watching them do it in traffic. Penn hadn’t been this charming in ages, pretending to be a talkative know-it-all smart enough to realize that he was a caveman relic from another era and perfectly content to have fun with it. He annoys Johnson with provocative, politically incorrect banter and is surprised to find that she is giving it her all. Their tender trash talk soon takes a more substantive turn, until the two of them confess secrets that could only be told to a stranger you know you’ll never see again.