Reflective Encounters

“Ostensibly Joy is the story of a boy in a juvenile detention centre who is struggling with the rules whilst also wishing to see his mother once again. All very good, all very British social realism. But Alexandra Brodski quickly takes us into much deeper and more fertile territory as our young protagonist finds himself under the thrall of one who is even younger than him.

Like our characters – who struggle with acceptance versus rejection or being part of regime that would deny them childhood – the film is constantly on a knife-edge between realism and the hallucinatory, between social drama and outright horror: as if Ken Loach had been given the go- ahead to make Lord Of The Flies. But these tonal shifts are subtle, culminating in a film that is consistently unsettling yet strangely also affirming.

With two great performances – Badger Skelton is empathetic as Jacob while Olivia Booth-Ford is unnervingly spectacular in playing the titular ten-year-old – Joy has qualities aplenty, burrowing under your skin and leaving its mark on you for a long time afterwards.”

— Laurence Boyce