One of the most important film festivals of the season is the Cannes Film Festival, everybody knows that. And although it has never outstood for their special interest in horror or science fiction movies, this year the festival line up includes a few interesting genre titles. One of them is Jessica Hausner‘s Little Joe (2019).
In the movie, a genetically engineered plant scatters its seeds and seems to cause uncanny changes on living creatures. The afflicted appear strange, as if they were replaced, especially for those who are close to them. Alice is a single mother dedicated senior plant breeder at a corporation engaged in developing new species. She has engineered a very special crimson 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, this plant makes its owner happy. Against company policy, Alice takes one home as a gift for her teenage son, Joe. They christen 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.
Little Joe (2019) is starred by Emily Beecham, Ben Whishaw, Leanne Best, Lindsay Duncan, Kerry Fox, David Wilmot, Kit Connor, Goran Kostic, Sebastian Hülk, Phénix Brossard and Yana Yanezic. Jessica Hausner has also written the movie together with her frequent co-writer Géraldine Bajard. This is not the first time the filmmaker has been nominated in Cannes. Her former works Amour Fou (2014), Hotel (2004), Lovely Rita (2001) and Inter-View (1999) also competed for awards at the festival. Although this is the first time she is competing for the Palme d’Or, the biggest award to achieve at the Cannes Film Festival.
Cannes Film Festival 2019 will open the 14th of May with the world premiere of Jim Jarmusch’s horror comedy The Dead Don’t Die (2019). Other interesting titles in competition together with Little Joe (2019) are Pain & Glory (2019) by Pedro Almodóvar, The Traitor (2019) by Gilbert Gunn and Michael McCarthy, Parasite (2019) by Joon Ho Bong, Oh Mercy! (2019) by Arnaud Desplechin, The Wild Goose Lake (2019) by Yi’nan Diao, A Hidden Life (2019) by Terrence Malick, and Bacurau (2019) by Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho. Out of competition, films worth to mention are Abel Ferrara‘s Tommaso (2019), Werner Herzog‘s Family Romance, LLC (2019), and the first 2 episodes of TV series Too Old to Die Young (2019– ) created by Ed Brubaker and Nicolas Winding Refn. It was rumored that Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) would make its world debut at Cannes Film Festival but it hasn’t been made official yet. Perhaps the movie is still unfinished. Or perhaps they save it for a final surprise. In any case, next month we’ll know.
