I had to watch the opening sequence of Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell twice to make sure I hadn’t imagined that the first 30-odd minutes are one long, uninterrupted take. I ended up watching the whole movie twice; that’s how easily it sucks you into its world. Turns out, I had imagined that one unbroken take. My mistaken impression about the opening is a testament to Perry’s serpentine camera movements and the brilliantly controlled chaos of the scene. I was even more surprised when I learned Perry didn’t shoot Her Smell digitally. He shot it on 35mm film, which would have made a sustained shot like the one I invented in my head that much more difficult.
My faulty memory aside, the real take away is that Perry – as well as his star and co-producer, Elisabeth Moss – has displayed virtuoso talent with this ambitious picture.
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It’s a real surprise that one of the most engaging and uplifting movies to come out of 2015 is centered around the creation of a mop. Joy is a film by writer/director David O. Russell, though, so there is much more swirling around that main plot point. Within the semi-autobiographical story of Joy Mangano – the entrepreneur responsible for the Miracle Mop – are the ups-and-downs of a real life Horatio Alger story, a nostalgic look back at the novelty of the QVC shopping channel, and a family drama reminiscent of a John Cassavetes film like A Woman Under the Influence.
Russell has had two major preoccupations in his filmmaking career. One is historical period pieces focusing on fictionalized events of true stories in the very near past, reflected by his films Three Kings and American Hustle. The director’s other mode is his intense examination of family dynamics, and the more dysfunctional, the better. That subject is represented by films like Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster and Silver Linings Playbook. Joy, like his 2010 film The Fighter, is a melding of the two.
Set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Russell frames his story of a woman struggling with the idea that she’s meant for greater things through the lens of a soap opera, an obsession of the main character’s mother. We’re clued into this with the movie’s introduction, an overwrought scene from the mother’s favorite soap that Russell stages with cheesy, histrionic glee. It serves as a key to the rest of the movie. Joy Mangano may be a real person, but just like soap operas are a melodramatic version of reality, the movie Joy is a fusion of real life and amplified drama.
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