Little Joe

Alice is a single mother who works as a genetic engineer and is more committed to her research than to her teenage son Joe. She has bred a new crimson flower with unusual properties: kept at the right temperature and properly tended, it releases a scent that makes the people around it feel happy. She takes one of the plants home for Joe and names it after him. As it grows, Alice begins to suspect that her creation is not as harmless as its friendly nickname suggests, and that the people and animals near it are changing.

The film is directed by Jessica Hausner, who wrote the screenplay with Géraldine Bajard. It came after her 2014 feature Amour Fou, and was followed by Club Zero in 2023. Emily Beecham plays Alice, with Ben Whishaw as Chris, Kerry Fox as Bella, Kit Connor as Joe, David Wilmot as Karl and Phénix Brossard as Ric. Bruno Wagner, Philippe Bober and Hausner produced. It is a German, Austrian and British production.

Little Joe runs 106 minutes and was released in November 2019. On TMDB it holds a rating of 5.7 from 334 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 6.4 from 128 reviews, so reviewers were somewhat warmer toward the film than the general audience.