The ironically named Joy (Bel Powley) is anything but; instead she and her partner Will (Nick Robinson) are calm and content in this neat little film which is essentially a musing on the difference between passion and contentment, via a retro-futuristic dystopia in which a pill is taken daily to tamp down those awkward big emotions that prevent life from running smoothly, but are also sort of the point of living.
The world these people occupy also satirises a particular kind of white-collar work and leisure environment – the sort of culture embraced by the companies you find in co-working spaces that are decorated so inoffensively that they have no personality whatsoever. (Think WeWork, or boutique hotels.) Everything is clean, everything is carefully tasteful, there’s nary a speck of grit to be found, other than carefully curated ersatz grit. Joy and Will’s emotional landscape is exactly the same.
