Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker (Circle Mirror Transformation, The Flick) brilliantly captures a child’s ephemeral understanding of time and the ineffability of mother-daughter relationships in this sublime screen debut. 

It’s the summer before Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) starts sixth grade, she is spending the casual months with her acupuncturist mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), in their home in the woods. As the months drift by, this taciturn girl, fiercely observant, watches her mother and three enigmatic adults drift in and out of their lives, whether romantic interests or reconnected friends.  

Set in 1991 rural Western Massachusetts, the superb debut film from Pulitzer Prize­–winning playwright Annie Baker is a work of surreal tranquility that moves at a different, lost pace of life, and which perceives heartbreak just as Lacy is beginning to grasp the world and her place in it. Baker has created a film about a mother and daughter quite unlike any other, remarkably astute in illustrating how adolescent self-awareness builds from small life experiences and careful observation of adult behavior, and Ziegler perfectly captures Lacy’s emotions and personality.  

Nicholson and Ziegler perform their roles with an inspiring lack of sentimentality, and the wondrous supporting cast includes Elias Koteas, Sophie Okonedo, and Will Patton. As Janet, Nicholson is equally astonishing, ever so slightly dissatisfied with her life but always there to be the gently listening ear for her unique child.