Little Joe
Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2019 1:34 pm
Jessica Hausner's Little Joe has been announced as a 2020 home video release from the BFI with a theatrical release on February 21st.
Trailer here
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http://ww.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=16500
Did you find it to be as offensive toward people struggling with mental health issues (particularly the medication piece) as some of the Cannes reviews suggested? Or am I thinking of the wrong movie?mfunk9786 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 19, 2019 1:42 pmLQ and I watched this and both outright hated it. It's much too understated for what it's trying to accomplish, somehow a more bloodless and morose version of a Yorgos Lanthimos film - and some of the set design and color palate choices are ill advised to the point of absurdity. I'd go as far as to just call it a bad movie from a comically inept filmmaker, but I'd have to see more of her work to be certain. Also, totally puzzled as to how this won Best Actress at Cannes, absolutely bizarre decision
Not sure what you may have in mind, specifically, re production value. There are no explosions or big crowd-scenes, of course; and there are, to be sure, a limited number of locations and a small cast, but, for a relatively low-budget film, the production design and cinematography are most striking and deliberate.
LITTLE JOE
Directed by Jessica Hausner
Emily Beecham, Ben Whishaw, Kerry Fox
See the trailer here
Blu-ray/DVD release on 15 June 2020 and simultaneously streaming on BFI Player (Subscription service), iTunes, Amazon Prime and Curzon Home Cinema
Following its theatrical release by the BFI on 21 February, Jessica Hausner’s first English language feature, Little Joe, will be released for home entertainment on 15 June 2020. Emily Beecham won Best Actress at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival for her lead performance and the film had its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival last year. The Blu-ray/DVD set includes filmed interviews with cast and crew.
Single mother Alice (Emily Beecham) is a dedicated plant breeder at a corporation engaged in developing new species. She has engineered a very special flower, remarkable not only for its beauty but also for its therapeutic value: if kept at the ideal temperature, fed properly and spoken to regularly, it makes its owner happy. Alice takes one home as a gift for her teenage son, Joe. They name it ‘Little Joe’ but as it grows, so too does Alice’s suspicion that her new creations may not be as harmless as their nickname suggests. Jessica Hausner’s (Lovely Rita, Lourdes) fifth feature also stars Ben Whishaw and Kerry Fox in a tense, paranoid sci-fi thriller that pinpoints the uncanny within the familiar to unnerving effect.
Special features
• Presented in Standard Definition and High Definition
• Jessica Hausner in Conversation (2020, 37 mins): the director and co-writer of Little Joe talks to Geoff Andrew about the film and her career to date, recorded at BFI Southbank
• Emily Beecham on Little Joe (2020, 2 mins): the Little Joe star talks about her character and what influenced both the film and her own performance
• Cast and crew Q&A (2019, 17 mins): Jessica Hausner, co-screenwriter Géraldine Bajard and costume designer Tanja Hausner are joined by actors Emily Beecham and Kerry Fox for a post-screening talk hosted by Geoff Andrew at the 2019 London Film Festival
• The Birth of a Flower (1910, 8 mins): Percy Smith’s mesmerising early time-lapse film captures the poetry of flowers as they open their petals to the light
• Trailer (2019)
• *** First pressing only *** Illustrated booklet with an extensive directors’ statement; a review by Catherine Wheatley and a feature by Kate Muir that were originally published in Sight & Sound March 2020, notes on the special features and full credits
Product details
RRP: £19.99 / Cat. no. BFIB1386 / 12
Austria, UK, Germany / 2019 / colour / 105 mins / English, with optional hard-of-hearing subtitles / original aspect ratio 1.85:1 // BD50: 1080p, 24fps, 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio (48kHz/24-bit), PCM 2.0 stereo audio (48kHz/24-bit)/ DVD9: 25fps, 5.1 Dolby Surround (448kbps), 2.0 stereo audio (320kbps)
But surely that's the entire point of the film. The body-snatched are essentially the same as they were before (they even retain a sense of humour), and the "but they're different!" anxiety is absolutely not their problem, but that of the uninitiated. I found the film much more interesting as a wry Invasion of the Body Snatchers riff / thought experiment, taking the essential concept of that film and rendering it as docile as possible, than as a piece of cinema in its own right. While I can see that the 'off' performances were a deliberate choice (with the pre-transformed characters about as stilted as the post-transformed ones, and possible more so), it didn't strike me as that well executed. Parsing the nuances of deliberately bad acting and common or garden bad acting isn't one of my favourite filmgoing activities.mfunk9786 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 19, 2019 1:56 pmAll the characters in the film save the lead are props, but amusingly in my view, the approach taken with the changes in said characters is so subtle that at times you can't even tell whether they've changed yet/at all. It's like a zombie film where becoming a zombie means you walk with an imperceptible limp that you as the viewer have to regularly look closely for. Considering that the film acknowledges how insignificant the personality changes that psychologically medicated people undergo are, it seems odd to think it has a particularly vicious agenda, but i can absolutely see why people got angry at this.
I'll be interested to read your comments when you watch the film, but i don't think it plays in this way at all. Those same plot elements are in play throughout the film, but not connected in the same way.colinr0380 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:00 pmI don't want to speak too confidently about this since Little Joe is still in my 'to watch' pile but in terms of the 'body snatcher' comments I wonder whether it might be just as worthwhile to compare it with Lourdes, in the sense that that film is about people who embark on a quest for external fulfillment of their troubles that kind of makes them seem strange and alien (or alienating) to everyone outside of that bubble.