By This review contains discussion of a graphic sequence of sexual assault. To engage with JOSEPHINE is to engage with this scene and its impact on the characters. If you have trauma related to sexual violence – please approach this film with extreme discretion and consideration for your needs.
Beth de Araújo’s JOSEPHINE is uninterested in abstracting the forced loss of childhood innocence. It confronts a painful truth. Sometimes being in the wrong place at the wrong time is all it takes to derail a young life. We witness a horrific sexual assault through the unlying eyes of the titular eight-year-old Josephine, setting her world into chaos. Araújo depicts the event in clear and excruciating detail. The rapist is shameless. He beats and assaults his adult victim outside of a park bathroom in plain sight. He probably wouldn’t stop even if he knew that Josephine was watching him. Since its Sundance premiere, there’s been debate about the necessity of such a graphic depiction; it absolutely limits the audience for what is otherwise a vital and riveting depiction of the mistakes even well intentioned adults make while caring for a traumatized child. Perhaps a recut version should be available to those who only want to experience that aspect of the story. Speaking strictly for myself, I don’t think the film would’ve had the same impact without it. There can be no ambiguity about what Josephine experienced. My adult mind was profoundly disturbed by what I saw and, in turn, my empathy for this anguished child had no limits.
We get very little time with Josephine (Mason Reeves) before her world is broken. She and her father Damien (Channing Tatum) are en route to kick the soccer ball around the park. Before they leave, Damien conducts an adorable drill where he has Josephine sprint under the garage door before it closes. He’s a kind and loving father who is overjoyed to have a daughter who shares in his love of being active, but even with such a strong connection, he cannot protect her. Josephine finds herself in front of the atrocious act because she happens to sprint away and veer left on a path as Damien goes right to look for her. By the time he catches up, rapist Greg (Phillip Ettinger) has already run off and victim Sandra (Syra McCarthy) is lying on the ground barely conscious. Damien’s first instinct is to chase Greg and sure enough, he and the police catch him. Josephine and Sandra wait in the back of the cop car in disbelief.
When we finally return home, Josephine’s mother, Claire (Gemma Chan), wants to take a more direct approach to the situation. She wants to educate and therapize Josephine so that she can understand and cope with the events as well as a child can. Damien wants to reassure his daughter that she will never personally face this pain, encouraging Josephine to take self defense classes and stay active. Neither is entirely coherent or correct in their approach. Both panic and waver as Josephine starts acting out. This tension is inflamed by Greg’s impending court case. Sandra has opted out of testifying, leaving Josephine as the only person who can corroborate the story.
Mason Reeves is given a burden that could break an actor of any age. Josephine has no basis for how to process these events. This is her first exposure to anything sexual whatsoever. As such, she is learning about sex and rape simultaneously, forever entangling the two in her worldview. Greg becomes a proverbial monster under her bed. She sees him everywhere. Phillip Ettinger does some terrifying physical work in these moments. He’s not a demonic re-imagined version of Greg. Just an understated manifestation of this otherwise anonymous man’s permanent dwelling in Josephine’s psyche. When Josephine starts to hurt her fellow students, and even her parents, there is a sense that she hopes that violence will be the thing that wards Greg off. Yet, all of these grown ups keep asking her about what he did while also sharing that he has been bailed out of jail. Our legal system becomes another nonsensical beast in Josephine’s world, shattering her naive viewpoint that life is supposed to be fair. Reeves brings this unbearably complicated arc to life with grace and even subtlety. It is as brave a performance as any child has ever given on screen.
Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan both deliver the most assured and complex dramatic work of their careers. Tatum has modeled his screen persona on gentle and compassionate masculinity. Damien is actively trying to correct the harsh way his father treated him and was doing a great job before life threw this situation at him. We watch his kindness and patience towards both his circumstances and Josephine crack as he realizes just how scared he is of the world she is entering. Chan’s turn is a bit understated. Claire wants to be a grounding presence for her daughter; someone who can be trusted in perpetuity. She overstates this intention to the point of pushing her daughter away at times. There’s a part of Josephine that wonders if her parents are versions of Greg and Sandra who simply aren’t strangers to her.
Nobody gets to be a saint. Even the well intentioned social workers, teachers, and lawyers make mistakes in how they deal with Josephine. This isn’t to demonize any of their professions. It is better that these people are in Josephine’s orbit than not, but they are just as prone to human error. Araújo could’ve taken the safe route of proclaiming that all professionals will be flawless in their approach to predicaments like Josephine’s, but that is simply not the truth. These clinicians are cogs in flawed systems; offering and acting as approximate constructs for how to take care of a child. JOSEPHINE never feels like a PSA or a lecture. It embraces its thorniness with open arms.
Araújo’s direction is impeccable. She and cinematographer Greta Zozula often place us either directly in Josephine’s point of view or observe the action from her height. This is particularly true of scenes where Josephine is catapulted into adult conversations. The camera anxiously spins around the dinner table as Damien, Claire, and a detective discuss how Josephine will get involved in the case. Once she does make it to the courtroom, the camera runs around the space like an anxious child as she is cross examined by a soft-hearted prosecutor (Michael Angelo Covino) and a slimy defense lawyer (Dana Millican, incredible and utterly rancid in this single sequence). The blocking for Greg’s pop-ins is equally inventive. They’re never jump scares. Sometimes he’s just standing in the corner of the room, other times his soulless eyes vaguely linger in the darkness of Josephine’s bedroom. It’s certainly not a pleasurable viewing experience, but Araújo keeps the pacing taut, not wasting a single scene.
Currently, JOSEPHINE is my pick for the best film of 2026. It is also the most difficult and confrontational. In her intro preceding the AFI Fest screening, Beth de Araújo stressed that this was a film made for viewers to lean in and fully engage with the horrors that some are forced to experience. Most of the films we get that tackle such subject matter focus on large scale problems like war that affect untold masses of people. Those stories are valuable, but we should not in turn forsake more everyday ones like JOSEPHINE. After all, these are the ones that could be happening in your community. These are the stories that remind us not to look away.
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