Josephine the Witness

Josephine is the type of challenging, experimental second feature from a rising artist that used to be dominant at the Sundance Film Festival, which had its last event in Park City, Utah before its transition next year to Boulder, Colorado. Writer/director Beth de Araújo’s debut Soft & Quiet, which premiered at SXSW a few years prior, wasn’t a significant breakout, but nonetheless served as a calling card for the filmmaker’s way of building realism through long takes. If Soft & Quiet was the announcement of Araújo’s perspective, then Josephine is a proclamation as to why her voice is a necessary one. Beyond the exacting focus of Josephine, which would suggest that Araújo is now a more confident storyteller, the film tackled subject material so bleak that it would frighten most emerging artists.

Josephine is loosely inspired by an event in Araújo’s childhood, but is set within the modern day and updated to approximate the timeline shift. The titular character is an eight-year-old child, affectionately known by her parents as “Jo,” played by newcomer Mason Reeves. Jo would regularly practice soccer with her father Damien (Channing Tatum) on the weekends at the Golden Gate Park, but she’s inadvertently made into a witness in a brutal crime. The woman Sandra (Syra McCarthy) is in the midst of a regular jog when she’s bludgeoned, incapacitated, and sexually assaulted by the stranger Greg (Philip Ettinger), who soon flees the scene after Damien calls the police. Although Greg’s put into police custody, Jo’s testimony becomes vital to the case made by the prosecuting attorney Francisco Castellanos (Michael Angelo Covino).

Josephine doesn’t implement artificial suspense because the inciting moment is intended, by the nature of the crime, to be unanticipated. There’s only a hint of the curious, albeit timid personality of Jo before she’s separated from her father for a brief enough moment that their values within the criminal proceedings are completely different. Damien may have helped the victim and chased her attacker, but did not bear witness to the crime itself, which would make all of his contributions to the trial dismissed as speculative. Jo saw the entire assault play out, but is at an age where the subject of sexual relationships are foreign. There’s no reason for Jo to have any contact with Sandra until the criminal case is brought before the court, but Damien and his wife Claire (Gemma Chan) are unclear as to what context they should give to their daughter.

Although Josephine is set over a matter of months, Araújo doesn’t pull back from the immediacy of the moment. It’s jarring for Damien to immediately pick up soccer practice with Jo where they left off, but it’s because he’s faced with trauma as well, and isn’t ready to accept Jo’s questions. Jo’s perceptive enough to know that what happened was wrong and that Greg (who she only knows as “the man in the park”) is a bad person, but isn’t sure what it means that her parents are ridden with anxiety. Any immediate suggestion that they’d be able to simply move on is disintegrated because of Jo’s fixation on her memory, and it’s cast aside entirely when her essentiality is made clear within the legal proceedings.

Araújo’s brilliance is in identifying what takeaways Jo would have, and how parents like Damien and Claire might be forced to respond. Claire’s instinct of introducing an outside child psychologist is jettisoned when Jo, a kid with a distrust of authority, sees therapy as a “punishment;” Damien’s desire for her to take self-defense classes is well-intentioned, but puts him in a position where he might explain what she might be needed to protect herself from. A majority of the conversations between Claire and Damien are only half-heard as Jo’s crouched in the background or forced to sit in the backseat of their car; it's a successfully frustrating technique because there’s no telling what will stick within Jo’s mind. Jo hears words that she doesn’t understand and isn’t at an age where she can determine the degree of severity. If her father told her that it’s okay to fight someone who’s made her feel uncomfortable, Jo’s logical presumption is to implement her defensive techniques on a schoolyard bully.

The most heartbreaking aspect of Josephine is the slow realization of the situation’s reality, and that the consequences of Jo’s impressions will linger with her family for the rest of their lives. The elementary language used by both Damien and Claire to speak with Jo gives Araújo room to be ambiguous about any events within their respective lives that would color their perception of the trial. It’s suggested that Claire, as an Asian woman, knows what it's like to be a target, even if she’s never been victimized; Damien’s hesitance to punish Claire would imply a challenged relationship with his own father, which is obliquely referred to during one heightened moment. Chan’s strong in a role where she’s called upon to be withholding, yet resilient, but it’s Tatum who turns in the best work of his entire career.

The escalation of the trial doesn’t begin until the last third of the film, but it’s an appropriately harsh shift because of the way Jo’s treated. Josephine doesn’t make any outward statements about the flaws within the justice system that aren’t the perspective of Jo’s parents, but to see an eight-year-old girl accused of dishonesty by the defending attorney (played by Dana Millican in a particularly nasty performance) would’ve always provoked a reaction. The degree to which Josephine’s conclusion is rewarding or hopeful is subjective because of the film’s clear message that this never should’ve happened, and Jo shouldn’t have been asked to determine whether justice would be implemented. Josephine may be among the most “difficult” American films of recent years because of its unflinching, unfiltered projection of truth. A film that begins as disturbing as Josephine must justify what it’s asked of its audience, and Josephine’s nuanced interrogation of traumatizing education could be described without hyperbole as "necessary."