As has become something of a trend in the career of David O. Russell, the filmmaker behind Three Kings, The Fighter, and I Heart Huckabees, his latest film, Joy, will see release right at the end of the movie year on Christmas Day, December 25th. Similar releases were given to Silver Linings Playbook, The Fighter, and American Hustle, all of which garnered ample Oscar attention, likely due to these film's looking and acting like the cream of the New Hollywood crop of the 1970s. Following the sublime philosophical hysteria of Huckabees, Russell moved onto more cinephilic modes in his narratives, dialogue, and visual style, with American Hustle especially recalling a myriad of famed real-life crime epics from the likes of Martin Scorsese and Sidney Lumet, amongst others.
Not surprisingly, then, the first clip we've seen from Russell's upcoming Oscar hopeful revolves around a quote of a quote, namely Bradley Cooper's character's anecdote about David O. Selznick's marriage to a sort of all-American girl. It's Jennifer Lawrence who reminds him of the story that he told, one which she has clearly taken a lot of hope and gumption from in her tough life. It's a short bit of dialogue, but its one of those scenes that you can tell immediately came from Russell.
Check out the first clip from Joy below:
Russell both wrote and directed Joy on his own, but he worked on the story with Annie Mumolo, the writer of Paul Feig's now-classic Bridesmaids, which says quite a lot about the seeming female-centric narrative. It's definitely a clear break from the stories of tortured men that has been Russell's stock-and-trade for much of his career. For a director who has clearly taken a lot of his notes from Scorsese, this might prove to be his Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, an insightful, exuberantly shot tale of the struggles and final triumphs of a woman on the edge.
