Jessica Hausner at HOME
Tom Grieve, Cinema EditorHOME mark the release of Austrian director, Jessica Hausner’s English-language debut Little Joe with a mini retrospective dedicated to early and hard to see works.
Screening from Friday 21 February, Hausner’s new film is a stylised, austere slice of science fiction described in Rolling Stone as “a Body Snatchers for the age of antidepressants.” The filmmaker has enlisted the talents of Emily Beecham and Ben Whishaw for Little Joe, which follows Alice (Beecham), a plant breeder at a corporation engaged in developing new species. Trouble begins when Alice smuggles home a flower that is supposed to have therapeutic properties. The truth is more sinister.
Accompanying Little Joe, HOME have scheduled a screening of Hausner’s first film Lovely Rita – a darkly comic riff on bourgeois respectability – on Thursday 5 March. There is also a programme of short films showing from 35mm prints on Thursay 27 February. Included there is Hausner’s graduation film Inter-View, and her 1996 Locarno Film Festival, Lion of Tomorrow-winner, Flora.