Little Joe is a science-fiction film that is not set in the future. Its scientists are developing a flower that makes humans feel happier. The more a human cares for this plant, the happier the plant makes its caretaker by way of a scent that connects the flower to the mammalian nose. The scientist leading the project is Alice Woodard (Emily Beecham). She knows what she is doing. She has great confidence in herself and in her command of the science of plant breeding. She has a son, Joe, in his tweens, and a broken marriage. Joe wants his mother to date a man at her lab who has the hots for her. The director behind Little Joe is the underappreciated but brilliant Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner. Hausner never rushes a scene but wrings as much as she can out of it—the performance itself, as well as the blocking of the performance, and the space of the performance. She wants you to be aware of the development of the story, but without losing a sense of its ambiance—the story's amplifiers and also its distractions. The former intensifies and deepens the story; the latter reminds us that a story is not isolated but happens simultaneously as other stories are also happening.