LITTLE JOE – The setting is a plant breeding facility, where scientists are chuffed about their prize bloom, an orchid that releases mood-enhancing chemicals in exchange for its owner’s loving care. It’s mainly the research project of Alice (Emily Beecham), who takes a sample home for her son, hoping to get some off-radar fieldwork in on the side. That backfires when the people around her start to change; taking a dive into ‘Invasion Of The Body Snatchers’ type paranoia, ‘Little Joe’ shows us that even tiny potted things can have an agenda of their own. ‘Little Joe’, despite wearing the trappings of a sci-fi thriller, is at heart a relationships drama that functions as metaphorical swipe at the pharmaceutical industry (I think the plan to market oxytocin-producing ‘Little Joe’ is meant to analogise the mass use of antidepressants.) It’s austere but absorbing. The ultra-clinical atmosphere brings to mind the tone of some of the work of JG Ballard maybe, or perhaps the landscape of seventies UK TV sci-fi – there’s no full-on triffid action or anything, just the sense of eeriness that stems from watching emotionally constipated men and woman wandering round a big greenhouse to a soundtrack of strange, high-pitched wailing. Somehow, that’s far more tense and dramatic than it sounds; ‘Little Joe’ is stylistically compelling for sure, but its emotional drive comes from Beecham’s performance as the mother who fears losing contact with her son. Really interesting and highly recommended – from director Jessica Hausner, which makes me want to dig out her wonderful ‘Hotel’, a film that I remember as a very weird and dreamlike thriller with a shade or two of Lynch about it.
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