A VERY unusual picture tonally, 'Joy' is an adult feature that left me with more questions than answers quite honestly...and im still not entirely sure how I feel about it even now...
The plot wont *really* sound like anything new or fresh to anyone who's seen more than half a dozen of these older features. But its the execution thats left me headscratching.
The film follows 'Joy' a god fearing christian virgin girl who's 'Going steady' with a boyfriend, but saving herself till marriage. The film opens with her and her boyfriend falling out because she wont 'put out'. But all of thats about to change as, once Joy gets home, she finds her mothers away and she gets a knock at the door. On opening it, 2 men burst in to her mothers apartment and rape her. At first she's repulsed and horrified. But as it goes on, she begins to really get into it...and I mean REALLY. get into it. as she chases her attackers off demanding more sex that they really cant provide.
So...she heads out into the streets engaging in a string of sexual assaults against men who, are established as having libido issues, until Joy sexually assaults them...at which point they're miraculously cured, and dont want to press charges!
The Police however are forced to treat crime as crime and Lt. Hardcock is put on the case of tracking Joy down and locking her up before anymore attacks occur.
Thats pretty standard porn plotting. But what I wasnt expecting, was for the 2nd act of the film to essentially turn into David Cronenbergs 'Shivers' as news of Joys assaults hit the mainstream news, HOARDS of women suddenly become empowered to LITERALLY go out into the street, knock men to the ground and 'take' what they want...Hell, theres even a border parody of 'The Birds' in which a cop becomes trapped in a phone box while a group of women hungrily try to get in.
And...to try and keep it as simple as possible. this really is a game of two halves.
The scripts a total mess. Putting aside the fact that this is pitching itself as a 'comedy rape movie'...Which...thats a loaded opening gambit right there. It seems to REALLY struggle to nail what kind of tone it wants to go for. The initial apartment rape is harrowing, and the subversion is interesting but not surprising. I was expecting the film to veer off from here into a kind of 'Girl Gang'/'Post Roughie' era picture of Joy forging a girl gang to go and maraud the streets.
But instead it quickly slips from Harrowing, to slapstick comedy, before kind of settling into a...not exactly comedic, but definitely lighthearted picture...which is then turned harrowing AGAIN when one of the cops catches Joy.
The women rising up and raping random men is played offhandedly, its just something that runs in the background of the movie as a way to fill out the second act, and doesnt really get resolved or even explored beyond its introduction. It would have been much more interesting to follow the women in this picture as they Martyr Joy and challenge the patriarchy...But...this film isnt about female empowerment, every scene is still written and framed from the perspective of a mans desires, with even the one token lesbian scene playing more for titlation rather than 'Awakening'.
It ends up a little bit repetative and at an hour and 13 its a little slower and one note than I personally would have liked. The characters dont really get to develop all that much, the endings a little dissatisfying and the film has a real problem with establishing characters, then binning them off never to return.
It feels poorly structure, poorly planned out and really could have done with more of a focus than 'Hey! what if the WOMAN! Raped THE GUY!?!' as its only feature. There was kind of potential here to do something interesting...and they just...didnt.
Thats not to say its all bad, the film does have its moments...it's passably one note...but just being 'passable' is a bit dissapointing. Sharon Mitchell is delightful as Joy and really brings an innocent energy to proceedings. Shes great in role, but it would have been nice to have seen her work a bit more range, because basically she only gets two performance styles here...'Innocent' and 'terrified'.
What DOES save this film really is the cine and direction. while it may not have been a complex vision. Harley Mansfield here has delivered a picture that does have some clear creative thought behind it. The direction within the scenes is relatively solid...even if it does kind of get a bit tonally lost when all the scenes are stitched together. In each scene theres a clear creative vision behind what's wanting to be seen. and I appreciate that, especially given this is a mid to late 70s feature, and there was a not zero chance that this could have wound up looking sickly.
direction of the sex scenes is largely solid, it feels intimate and the use of close up shots and b-roll really help sell the scenes as being quite a bit more intense than they would have been in lesser hands. Theres a fixation on oral here that does seem to overshadow the other scenes in the film. I was hoping for a bit more variety...but y'cant win'em all...Whats shown here is consistent, and above average for the era. I just kind of wished they'd experimented a little bit more with camera placement, reaction shots and framing.
Shots are well composed on the cine front, colour use is a bit bland, its all a bit brown and beige...perfect 70s fodder, but a bit uninspiring, the sequences are cut together well, which makes the fact theres such MASSIVE tonal shifts on a scene by scene basis, all the more dissapointing.
The scorings a bit of a let down too. its pretty much all diagetic sound for the most part...and what tracks that ARE non diagetic are kind of 'by the numbers' still the audios crisp, maybe a bit more ADR during the sex scenes would have just tipped it into being something a bit 'extra' in my opinion...but I'll settle for whats here.
'Joy' ultimately struck me as a film that was having a bit of an identity crisis, taking a controversial and harrowing issue like Rape and being non comittal as to whether it wanted to play a reversal of the role as something comedic, harrowing or seedy. It never quite finds its feet tonally and as such fumbles the one thing that really made it stand out. That being said, the direction, casting and sequence structuring is solid and the cine isnt half bad if not a little uninspired. Its a weird film. One I dont think i'll catch again for a while...but its not bad. Not my taste, but above a lot of the tutt this era of the adult film industry was shoving out the door...Your milage may vary.
source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/joy-1977/
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