There’s a lot to say about Little Joe, but one thing cannot be denied: Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner‘s sixth feature can often be an intriguing and deeply unsettling movie. With the help of a perpetually stable, yet gently restless camera, which swirls and circles around the environments and characters to such a consistent extent that it’s nearly nauseating, Hausner crafts a unique and virtually indescribable aesthetic. Her film’s story world emphasizes sterility and rigid clinical order, but there’s a tense unpredictability in play; it’s like the film could destroy and break free of this aesthetic consistency at any given moment.
Considering the story at hand—which concerns a “magical” plant with potentially horrific side effects—this is a fascinating formal game to play. But then something…. weird happens. With each passing scene, a little bit of the veneer of tension crumbles. At a certain point, it’s clear that there’s really nothing going on beneath the film’s elaborate technical foundation. Once you go beyond the probing camera, beyond the steady zooms that drift into negative space, and beyond the icy style, this is an empty movie. Perhaps the emptiness is the point. But I’m not willing to give it quite that much benefit of the doubt.
A Plant to Make All Your Troubles Go Away
Cannes Best Actress winner Emily Beecham stars as Alice Woodard, a world-class scientist at a company looking to design the best herbal treatments to induce happiness. Alice is also a single, recently divorced mother, and her son, Joe (Kit Connor), is going through a period of intense transition. Juggling the work she loves and raising Joe isn’t easy for her, but Alice makes it all work just the same.
At the laboratory, she’s working on a powerful new plant, which has the potential to revolutionize how people feel on a day-to-day basis around the world. She’s looking to get the product ready for a plant showcase in a few weeks; along with her colleague, the uncomfortably insistent Chris (Ben Whishaw), Alice is feeling the time crunch to get this plant ready.
Despite this pressure, all seems to be going smoothly. Until the dog. The beloved dog of Bella (Kerry Fox), Alice and Chris’ co-worker, is exposed to the plant while exploring the lab one day. Subsequently, he becomes violent and cruel, attacking the owner he once loved; it gets so bad that Bella eventually has to put him down.
Regardless of this random and frightening occurrence, Alice refuses to believe that her plant—lovingly nicknamed “Little Joe” after her son—had anything to do with the dog’s sudden turn to violence. In fact, Alice is so confident that she eventually brings home one of her “Little Joe” plants for her own son to enjoy.
Then the paranoia sets in. Slowly but surely, Alice begins to notice minuscule changes in Joe’s behavior, as well as the behavior of the other people around her who have been exposed to the plant. Is the plant really altering the very fabric of these individuals? Are Alice and Bella just being paranoid? Has Alice herself been changed by the plant’s properties? These questions—and many more—linger as the film continues down this rabbit hole.
Disorienting Camera Movements Initially Fascinate
As a complex set of aesthetic tics, Hausner‘s film is remarkable. Clearly inspired by the ambiguity of Yorgos Lanthimos (The Killing of a Sacred Deer feels like an explicit reference) and the rigorous precision of Stanley Kubrick (an easy comparison, but it’s there), Little Joe quickly becomes unnerving.
So much is left unexplained, from questions of temporality and location to the very nature of the narrative at hand. Hausner‘s curious, exploratory camera is a welcome presence that calls attention to itself repeatedly, and cinematographer Martin Gschlacht contrasts that subtle energy with some wonderful images; in particular, the reds provide a stunning balance to the overwhelming blankness of the whole affair.
Then there’s the musical score (there’s no credited composer on IMDb, which leads me to believe it was a compilation of sorts), which can be both perfectly strange and just a touch too overbearing. All things considered, Hausner sustains an enigmatic mood—oddly didactic in its atmospheric intensity without ever fully telling the viewer what to make of the journey.
And while I don’t feel particularly well-suited to discuss the politics and value system of Little Joe‘s treatment of drugs and herbal enhancements (from my cursory examination of the critical discussion, this seems to be the focus), what can make the film compelling is its focus on nearly imperceptible changes in personality and disposition. Those who consume the plant’s infectious pollen aren’t changed radically; they’re only altered just enough for Alice to notice that something is off. The implications of that are certainly memorable.
Dull, Sluggish Genre Movie Never Coheres
But in spite of these crucial, fascinating choices by Hausner and the creative team, Little Joe feels like traveling on a long, sometimes painful road to nowhere. The idea of observing the invisible is radical in theory, but in the context of the film itself, there’s such a disappointing absence of character detail that the changes are rarely meaningful to the audience.
Alice, Chris, and even Joe are flat and boring characters; their behaviors, whether influenced by the pollen or not, seem disconnected from any real motivation. Plus, even with the prominent authorial influences in play, Little Joe is sorely missing the dark and vicious humor that typically accompanies the icy style of someone like Lanthimos.
Yet none of this still quite gets to the core of what doesn’t work. The film essentially functions as a hybrid of sorts: it toggles between being a pure arthouse film and a consummate genre vehicle. Typically, this combination produces challenging results; here, the two modes are constantly in competition with each other. Whenever Little Joe seems more content to be vague and odd and curiously remote, it suddenly promises a more immediately engaging pulpy offering. And whenever it appears to be on the verge of diving head-first into an exploitative mode, Hausner backs up and switches gears once again.
Sustained for 106 minutes (it feels more like 3 hours), this is downright untenable.
Little Joe: Conclusion
There’s much to admire in Hausner‘s latest film, and I eagerly await whatever project she decides to embark on next. However, that doesn’t change the fact that Little Joe tested my patience in all the wrong ways.
By establishing a web of interesting plot threads—the collective desire for chemical alteration, the subtlety of our behavioral changes, the need for parents to understand their changing children—and failing to engage with any of them in a memorable way, Little Joe ends up feeling like a severe missed opportunity. And with a roster of characters that feels about as flat as humanly possible, Little Joe‘s ambiguity and dread never carry the proper weight. It’s a frustrating and exhausting experience.
What did you think of Little Joe? Are you a fan of director Jessica Hausner’s other work? Let us know in the comments below!
Little Joe will be released in the US on December 6, 2019 and in the UK on February 21, 2020. For all international release dates, click here.
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