In 1990, a divorced American mother of three invented a mop that must have been second only to the pill in its usefulness. The mop wrung itself and did not need to be touched with the human hand because of a design innovation by its inventor, Joy Mangano. Her practical solution to a basic problem made Mangano very rich, but she had a fair share of shovelling dirt before she earned a reputation as a serial entrepreneur and a celebrity on the Home Shopping Network.
In David O Russell’s seriocomic account of Mangano’s rags-to-riches journey, starring Jennifer Lawrence, her best and worst allies are her family members. Each of them is straight out of one of the television soaps to which Joy’s delusional mother Terry (Virginia Madsen) is addicted. Joy’s father Rudy (Robert De Niro) is divorced and never without a girlfriend, which is fortunate since his latest mark Trudy (Isabella Rossellini) is persuaded into funding Joy’s miracle mop venture. Tony (Edgar Ramirez) has divorced Joy but hasn’t yet moved out of the basement and is a handy babysitter when she takes off to fight patent battles and persuade powerful buyer Neil (Bradley Cooper) to feature her on his television shopping network. Only Joy’s grandmother (Diane Ladd) seems rational, but her voiceover is delivered from beyond the grave, like in a movie by Billy Wilder, one of the major influences on Joy’s halfway-successful attempt at screwball comedy.
Russell has rolled out an old-fashioned women’s picture with brand-new upholstery. Swept beneath the carpet is a credible measure of the obstacles faced by Mangano and other women like her. Russell packs in far too many themes – female entrepreneurs, small businesses, the American cult of success, the bizarre world of teleshopping, the dynamics of a dysfunctional family – to provide a coherent picture of Joy’s achievements. The movie title echoes, but has none of the hard-nosed observations, of The Pursuit of Happyness, which deals with an ordinary American’s struggle for success. The largely fawning narrative treatment veers between kitchen sink realism and TV farce – Joy’s dreams are converted into fantasy sequences, and there is something fable-like about the almost inevitable slaying of her demons, whatever they may be.
The joy in this 124-minute drama comes from watching the fabulously chosen cast play off each other. Joy shares with Russell’s previous feature, American Hustle, a loose and improvisational quality and a light-headed and slightly manic approach to storytelling. Russell, who has co-written Joy, has moved further and further away from his indie roots to become a mainstream genre experimenter. The director likes to play with form and formula, bringing immense stylishness and personal touches to standard-issue plots. The coming together and tearing apart of people in Joy has the brittle and bittersweet quality of real life, but nothing sticks. Every scene suggests a big reveal or a large truth around the corner that is soon thwarted.
Nowhere is this more evident than when Joy locks eyes with Neil when he is explaining how the television shopping network broadcasting works. It’s one of many deftly orchestrated and discrete set pieces in Joy, and there is a hint of sexual frisson between seller and buyer. Or did we imagine it because of the emotional core that Lawrence’s superbly rounded performance lends to her character? It’s perhaps fitting that a movie that is self-consciously influenced by television is not excessively bothered about the big picture.