Little Joe

Back in 2001 when her feature debut Lovely Rita was screened at Cannes, Jessica Hausnerbecame a festival darling with her films often competing at the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section. Her newest feature Little Joe is no exception to this, competing for the Palme d’Or at last year’s festival and then later being acquired by BFI for UK distribution.

Centred around plant breeder Alice Woodard (Emily Beecham), her work entirely consists on creating new strain of flowers. Alice and her team, including Chris (Ben Whishaw) believe they’ve made a scientific breakthrough in creating a plant that can make their owners happy. Naming the plants ‘Little Joe’ after her son Joe (Kit Connor), Alice finds herself distant from family matters. She chooses takeaway every night for her son due to her “never being good at any cooking.” Hausner’s style in the film is evident and clearly paying homage to the campy 70s b-movies that mixed the genres of sci-fi and horror. Films like Demon Seed are brought to life through Little Joe’s irregular score and constant camera movements. Hausner never settles for a static shot, whether with sliders, tracks or zooms, you can never settles with these characters when watching. There are some choices that seem present to innovate this sentient sci-fi subgenre; long pull-ins don’t focus on a character but instead the dead space between them, highlighting the distance between Woodard and everyone else in the film.

Depicted as an oddball character by Beecham (which won her the award for Best Actress at Cannes), it seems on the surface that she’s just an introverted workaholic but there’s more to her plant than meets the eye. Aggressively pollinating itself and causing other plants in the greenhouse to die, Little Joe spreads further across the lab despite its inability to reproduce. And with no other creature around to pollinate, Little Joe turns to the humans set to look after it. It may seem risky territory to have a plant as your antagonist given M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening failed miserably in trying to cause high-stakes tension every time a leaf bristled in the wind; but Hausner does a good job nonetheless. There is some confusion with character’s true intentions and there isn’t a real connection to anyone on screen, but this may be purposely done by the film.

Still images from Little Joe may advertise itself as a white and bland looking film but it in fact turns out to be one of the most colourful films of recent years. Alice is always in some bright garment mixing yellows and oranges, whilst every room has one clear colour in its pattern and wallpaper. The colour doesn’t impact the story at all but it further replicates the style of b-movie that Hausner took inspiration from.

Whilst it may be an interesting film with a concept not regularly explored in modern films, its pacing has the same issues of these films from yesteryear. It doesn’t expand the idea as much as it should, but Little Joe is still a film worth looking into if you fancy something different.