A One Mann’s Movies review of “Josephine”. (From the 2026 London Film Festival). (2026, 5*, NR).
Wowser! This is a real gut-punch of a film that I saw with ‘On’ Bashar and Jenn Jones of the Movie Bread Club podcast. And we spent the next hour discussing it! Jenn and ‘On’ even did a Naked Gun walk along the South Bank (reaching the countryside!) This starts with a really hard scene to watch (earning it its undoubted 18 certificate) but then turns into a really engrossing drama-cum-legal battle.
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
Eight-year-old Josephine (newcomer Mason Reeves) knows that she saw something bad, but struggles to find answers. Her parents (Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan) grapple with how to comfort her.
Certification:
UK: NR; US: NR. (This film has not yet received a classification by the BBFC, but I would expect it to be an 18 based on a graphic and horrible sexual assault at the start of the film.)
Talent:
Starring: Mason Reeves, Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan, Philip Ettinger, Syra McCarthy, Eleanore Pienta, Dana Millican, Michael Angelo Covino.
Directed by: Beth de Araújo.
Written by: Beth de Araújo.
Running Time: 1h 59m.
Review:
Positives:
- The film starts with a vicious rape… not that there are un-vicious rapes, but this is one involving not only sexual assault but violence. And all of this is seen through the eyes of young Josephine (Mason Reeves) hiding only 50 feet away that makes it all the more sickening. Was this gratuitous by writer/director Beth de Araújo? No, I don’t think so, since you really need to experience the horror to relate to the events that unfold. (As ‘On’ commented to me, you also need the PTSD yourself.) But it is a really hard scene to sit through. Not Irreversible hard. But still hard. If Irreversible was a 10, then I would put this at about a 7.
- Newcomer Mason Reeves delivers a pitch-perfect performance as the 8 year old Jo. She has such a perfect, impassive stare, but has the range to go ballistic when she needs to. She is lost in a world of adult concepts that are alien to her: “What was the man doing?” she asks, and (heartbreakingly) “When can I have a gun?”. Cinema is littered with child stars who don’t progress into the profession, but we might look back at this film when Ms Reeves is picking up her first Oscar. It’s a child-star performance that deserves to be up there with Tatum O’Neal in Paper Moon, Anna Paquin in The Piano and Haley Joel-Osment in The Sixth Sense.
- Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan are also fabulous in the roles of her parents, Damien and Claire. Tatum, trying to break from his Magic Mike beefcake roles, has impressed me in dramas like Dog and Roofman but here I think he gives a career best as the troubled dad, getting progressively distant from his daughter. Gemma Chan (The Creator, Don’t Worry Darling) is also really effective as Jo’s professional ballet dancing Mum. The great drama here is that they have such diverse parenting approaches in terms of handling Jo’s mental crisis: Damien is like a bull-at-a-gate in his no-nonsense approach such that his pleas (“There are way more good guys in this world than bad guys”) seem to fall on deaf ears, whereas Claire goes too far the other way, overly appeasing and soft.
- The film genuinely creeped me out with the regular inclusion of Philip Ettinger as Greg. It’s a bold directorial choice and I thought it worked brilliantly.
- Beth de Araújo, with a degree background in Sociology, is a director I will have on my list to watch for. This is only her second feature (after 2022’s Soft & Quiet, which I’ve not seen). But sections of this film were just inspired: a trampoline-bouncing scene, perfectly blocked, with Damien and Claire watching out of different windows was marvellous. But a montage scene during a ballet show is one of the most breathtaking bits of cinema I’ve seen this year: as Claire dances on stage, slo-mo, with three man in a sexually charged routing (with Jo watching impassively) we see Jo wearing incredibly ghoulish face-paint ‘rescuing’ another little girl on a carousel and ants attacking a Halloween carved apple. It’s a tour-de-force of filmmaking.
- The San Francisco locations are really effective. Particularly during a talk between Damien and Jo at the Fort Point National Historic Site in the shadow of the Golden Gate bridge.
Negatives:
- Viewers may feel frustrated with a lack of some key information when the film ends.
- The ‘climax’ of a sex scene between Damien and Claire felt a little unnatural and on-the-nose to me: I might have chosen to leave it out if I was directing.
Triggers
Contains scenes of graphic violence, nudity, sex, and sexual violence that will I’m sure be extremely triggering to any women who’ve ever been in similar circumstances.
Summary Thoughts:
This might turn out to be one of the films of the LFF for me. Great film has to stir emotion in me, and this one is one that I have been thinking about ever since I saw it. Is it a film I ‘enjoyed’ and would want to watch again? No and possibly not, respectively. But it IS extremely well-made. It is one of those that I find really difficult to rate as a result. I was originally 4.5 stars on this one… but in writing up this review I really find it’s hard to fault. And it hasn’t left my mind. So I’ve reached for my seldom used top prize for this film.
It’s a film that really deserves to get some Oscar attention. I do worry that the hard and distressing subject matter might act against it? But I’ve just read that it swept the top honours at the Sundance Film Festival, bagging both the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic as well as the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award. So perhaps there is some hope here for some Oscar recognition.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer for the film is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K32NPBLpqZI.
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