LITTLE JOE

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 12 | Blu-ray/DVD/ VOD

Director Jessica Hausner

Cast Emily Beecham, Ben Whishaw, Kerry Fox, Kit Connor

Though inspired by the director’s love of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, this sci-fi/ arthouse cross-pollination may frustrate SF fans, due to the steps she takes to subvert the genre, foster ambiguity and wrongfoot viewers.

Emily Beecham plays Alice, a plant breeder working on a flower designed to make its owners feel happier. It may be doing so too well, changing people’s personalities as a means of replicating itself. And by breaking protocol and taking one home, Alice has exposed her son.

It’s a stylish film – Alice’s array of shirts in (to quote the costume designer) “cream cake colours” are especially succulent. The score, which repurposes music by late Japanese composer Teiji Ito – often to jarring effect – is also striking. So is the eccentric camerawork: slow zooms straight through tête-à-têtes and into the curtains may have you fearing that the operator’s nodded off. But such strategies have an alienating effect which make it more of an object for contemplation than a story which sucks you in.

Extras The highlight stems from the BFI archives: eight mesmerising minutes of time-lapse film of flowers opening, dating from 1910. Plus: footage from a London Film Festival Q&A (17 minutes) and a BFI “In Conversation” event (37 minutes); a two-minute snippet of Beecham; trailer. Ian Berriman