Little Joe **** / *****
Directed by: Jessica
Hausner.
Written by: Jessica
Hausner and Geraldine Bajard.
Starring: Emily Beecham (Alice
Woodard), Ben Whishaw (Chris), Kerry Fox (Bella), Kit Connor (Joe Woodard),
Phenix Brossard (Ric), Leanne Best (Brittany), Andrew Rajan (Jasper), David
Wilmot (Karl), Goran Kostic (Mr. Simic), Yana Yanez (Mrs. Simic), Sebastian
Hulk (Ivan), Jessie Mae Alonzo (Selma), Phoebe Austen (Ella).
Little
Joe is an unsettling horror movie that slowly, but surely, builds a sense of
unease. This isn’t a horror film with any real violence or blood – not even
people dying, but rather just a mounting sense of discomfort. It’s also a film
that has built up some controversy for its worldview – one that seemingly
suggests that chemically altering your moods – with say, anti-depressants –
makes you somehow less human, less of yourself than you used to be. Personally,
I think the film is a little more complicated and nuanced and ambiguous than
that – but I get where those people are coming from.
The film
stars Emily Beecham as Alice Woodard, a brilliant scientist specializing in plants.
She is divorced, and raising her son Joe not by herself – her husband is
involved, but he’s far away. Her latest creation is something she has called
Little Joe – and it is a plant whose smell will alter your mood – essentially
acting as an anti-depressant, turning your mood around. It is a major breakthrough
at the company she is fairly new at – and everyone is very excited about going
to the upcoming flower show with it. It just needs a little bit more testing to
ensure it is safe for public. Alice has cut some corners along the way – using
some virus she wasn’t supposed to, and even bringing one of the Little Joe’s
home to her own house. And then, weird things start happening.
One of
her colleagues is Bella (Kerry Fox) – and she has her own history of mental
illness, serious enough that she has had to take time off in the past to deal
with it. She starts the commotion when she thinks her dog – who was in the room
with the hundreds of Little Joe’s is not her dog anymore. The concern grows
when another colleague – Chris (Ben Whishaw) doesn’t seem to be quite himself
anymore – and has become even more gung ho about Little Joe then before. Then
her son – and a new girlfriend – start acting a little strange. One by one, her
colleagues – even those who were once unsure of Little Joe – start to think
it’s the great, and even start to think they don’t need to do all that safety
testing after all. Alice starts to get a little worried herself.
The film
was directed by Jessica Hausner, and the film may recall for some viewers
Stanley Kubrick. The film does have a more cold, detached style from the
cinematography, which is somehow both chilly and pastel bright, to the ever
strange sound design – constantly inside your head with clanging sounds, to the
performance style. In that regard, you may remember the type of performance
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos elicited from his casts prior to The Favourite.
The scariest thing in the film is just the lingering shots of all this hundreds
of plants – which may or may not be turning people into versions of Invasion of
the Body Snatchers pod people.
It is
this aspect of the movie that has become understandably controversial. Is the
film really arguing that using anti-depressants is a bad thing? That we should
want to feel bad, even if we could feel good if feeling good means having to
use something external to change our body chemistry? Or is the film more
complicated than that – is it about the paranoia that many people who are
prescribed anti-depressants feel will happen to them if they take it – and some
(including myself, during my one stint on anti-depressants) feel while they are
on them. The film leaves enough ambiguity in its depiction – right up until the
end, which doesn’t really answer any questions, that you can grapple with it.
If we ever find out that Hausner is a scientologist, or some other anti-psychiatry
kook, then we’ll know – but otherwise, we may never know.
What I do
know is that Little Joe is a tremendously unsettling movie from beginning to end.
There is something about the chilly atmosphere, the brilliant performances –
none more so than Beecham’s (who won the Best Actress prize at Cannes), and
Hausner’s absolute control over the film that just gets under your skin, and
stays there. It’s deeply unsettling movie – all the more so because it doesn’t
give you the answer you want it to.
