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Austrian director Jessica Hausner tells "Little Joe" the story of an experienced and unscrupulous breeder, about to invent a revolutionary flower in her laboratory. A disturbing film, at once very refined and with strange colors.
Filmmaker Jessica Hausner loves horror movies and willingly admits to being a workaholic and wanting to control everything, much like Alice, the main character of her new film, starring Emily Beecham, the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actress Award.
Alice, a single mother, offers her son Joe a copy of this vermilion red plant called "Little Joe". Thanks to its genetically modified organism, it gives its owner happiness. Soon, Alice realizes that she has created a monster and that her son is also escaping him. Interview.
RFI : A song in your movie Little Joe is called Happiness Business . Happiness, is that what everyone is looking for today ?
Jessica Hausner : Yes, I think. This desire to have happiness has become so intense. When someone asks you, " How are you ? No one dares to say, " I'm bad ." Everyone replies, " Well, I'm very successful, " and so on. For me, it has become a language of wood. This absolute desire for happiness is today linked to business. My husband composed this song. At first, I asked him to compose just a song about happiness, then he had this idea of Happiness Business . Indeed, I think that our societies are today fascinated in a strange way by this desire for happiness.
Little Joe is also reminiscent of another movie, La Vague , a 2000s German film that gives high school students an experience of testing their ability to resist a totalitarian system. Does genetic manipulation also represent for you a danger of totalitarianism ?
This is the political part of the question. In my opinion, some of this science is already quite totalitarian. I have the impression that this has replaced what religion used to be. Religion gave answers and priests taught us Good and Evil. Today, it is the scientists who have taken this role, they hold the information on everything. But often, a scientist says the opposite of another scientist. So neither do they know what is right. And it's important to understand that, because we already believe too much in science.
You've worked with Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke on movies like Funny Games , before breaking into your own movies like Lovely Rita or Hotel . Do you mind being always compared to Haneke ?
To be honest, I was fed up [laughs]. I absolutely appreciate his work. He is a very great director. But after so many years, I became a director myself. So, it's not very nice to be still compared to him today.