“Can I have a piece of you?” 

Pleading whispers and needy touches. Close-ups of hands and ears and legs. All these little pieces spliced together to make an image of the sun, the moon, the stars, the universe that is Janet. Mother first, person second.

Annie Baker’s history on the stage translates phenomenally here, a film comprised of stunning, often static shots reminiscent of the work of Chantal Akerman. One quite literally falls into the scenes presented in their most naturalistic form. 

Janet is someone drawn to physical touch as long as it’s not from her daughter, Lacy. In those intimate moments between the two of them, there’s a dread that seeps in, a silent “when will this be over”…

When I was 13 or 14, my family took a long weekend trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota with a couple of other families we were close to. Ostensibly, the plan was to ride four-wheelers around the Hills, and I know we did some of that. What I most remember, however, were two realizations.

The first came one night as we waited for our names to come up on the waiting list at a restaurant in the small town of Hill City. The various people I was there with all went to gawk at a street show -- a rather ludicrous Western pastiche performed by locals who pantomimed as pre-recorded actors read the script over loudspeakers lining the…

The complexities of a mother who so clearly yearns for a level of independence that motherhood can’t grant her at this stage of her daughter’s life. Without the separation there is reliability and suffocation. The reliability of having Lacy to be an inappropriate source of an open ear to hear the woes of love and relationships in adulthood leads into the suffocation by Lacy who’s dependability and clinginess to Janet grows by the minute. Take and go, take and go.

Children should be treated like the humans and separate beings that they are… but I hate the idea of considering them a “mini adult”. They are growing, forming their personalities, and molding their brains. The things they are exposed to…