Halfway through David O. Russell’s latest offering, QVC executive Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper) tells Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence) that “In America, the ordinary meets the extraordinary every single day”. In another less amiable encounter, Joy quotes his own words back to him:  “in America, all races, all classes can meet and make whatever opportunities they can… you said that”.

These reflections would not look unfamiliar in a Frank Capra script. The notion of American prosperity for ‘the people’ and the celebration of ‘ordinary’ form the emotional core of films like Mr Deeds Goes to Town and It’s A Wonderful Life. Indeed, numerous associations have already been made between the two directors. However, nowhere is the comparison between Russell and Capra more fitting than in Joy.  We find our George Bailey in the eponymous female hero, a single mother who invents and manufactures an innovative self-wringing ‘Miracle Mop’. The film documents Joy’s journey from her very first creation as a child to the expansion of her business empire. Along the way, it explores the obstacles she faces, from her dysfunctional family to the corrupt and fraudulent businessmen who attempt to curtail her success. Like Bailey, Joy is our benevolent protagonist whose goodness triumphs over the forces working against her. 

One of the most remarkable aspects of Joy is its exploration of womanhood. Unlike most films with a female lead, Joy’s romantic life is the least examined and least compelling piece of the whole narrative. As seven-year-old Joy tells her sister at the beginning of the film, she doesn’t need a ‘prince’ because she has a ‘special power’. Russell’s storytelling examines gender roles and expectations in interesting and nuanced ways, revealing the complexity of gender as a marker of identity. Joy finds strength and power through contributing to the world of domesticity and housework, traditional symbols of female restriction and oppression. In a room of mostly male QVC executives who mock her product, she states “I don’t know much about graphs or statistics or business, quite frankly. But I do clean my own home.” As she stands in front of television cameras in a kitchen on TV sets to sell her invention, she enters the public sphere through her knowledge of the private world of the household. It is in this environment that she becomes a successful, independent businesswoman. There has been mixed reception regarding whether Joy can be understood as ‘feminist’. It is neither straightforwardly progressive nor regressive but demonstrates how Joy Mangano negotiated the masculine world of business through her inventiveness in a domestic setting. Lawrence’s performance is outstanding in communicating this incredible, independent spirit.

Joy is in many ways Russell’s most experimental film to date, or at least, his most effective use of different forms and stylistic devices. The film regularly deviates into melodrama where characters become heroes and villains in the most visually obvious ways. There are extended close-ups of Joy’s jealous stepsister Peggy and her harsh investor, Trudy that quickly lose any sense of realism. However, these moments of fantasy are not simply aesthetic exercises. Rather, they help Russell locate his film in a distinctive sense of place and time. The editing emulates the style of the absurd soap operas that Joy’s mother so obsessively watches throughout and thus, helps set the story in the mundane, consumer world of American suburbia in the 1980s.

Joy very much belongs to the same juncture in Russell’s career as his last two films, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle in its exploration of America’s social and cultural fabric. However, perhaps due to its biographical subject matter, the other characters in Joy do not share the same depth and complexity as supporting roles in Russell’s other work. Cooper’s character is barely developed but towards the end, audiences are left with an odd, sentimental moment between Joy and Neil. It lacks the extraordinary warmth and humour we have come to expect from Russell and his portrayal of ‘ordinary’ American people.