QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM BERLIN
One sunny morning in California, quiet and introspective eight-year-old Josephine (Mason Reeves) goes for a stroll in the park with her burly and chirpy father Damien (Channing Tatum). Suddenly, the girl runs away and disappears into the woods. She then witnesses Greg (Philip Ettinger) rape hapless Sandra (Syra McCarthy) just outside a public toilet. The rapist flees after seeing the child, but he’s promptly captured by the police. Josephine (nicknamed “Jo” or “Jojo”) is left shocked and bewildered, unable to grasp what happened. She has to google the word “rape” in order to comprehend the gravity of the situation.
Josephine’s doting mother Claire (Gemma Chan) panics upon finding out about the events. She wants to take Josephine to a psychologist, but the young girl has no idea what that entails, and promptly does yet another runner. Her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. She begins to apply the non-commendable actions that she learnt from the adults involved in the fateful morning: she spit on people after seeing her father spit on the rapist; she refuses to wear a seat belt after an irresponsible police officer tells her that seat belts are silly; she wants to guy a toy machine gun from the supermarket; and she uses the f-word at school (she knows that it means “sex”, a now very familiar concept). Eventually, she becomes violent towards a schoolboy and her own mother. Jo’s parents scramble to control their unruly child. Their bickering, and their opposing education tactics cause even more distress.
Parallel to this, the police ask Josephine describe the rape in minute detail. The child naturally lacks the vocabulary needed to order to qualify such developments. Despite the presence of a doting social worker, a dog and many toys, the video statement is visibly difficult. The possibility that she may have to do the same in front of a judge is even more terrifying. Josephine becomes increasingly nervous. She has very vivid visions of the rapist. She sees him in her bedroom, sitting on the table with her parents, basically everywhere.
It is the topic of child trauma that sustains the narrative. Some of the developments are rather clumsy: a scene in which a panicky Jo interrupts her parents having sex is poorly acted and staged. The imaginary rapist apparitions are scary at first, however they become aimless and repetitive after a while. Such device is used virtually throughout the entire duration of this two-hour movie, without adding any new information and/or subtleties.
The film is also an indictment on American law enforcement, namely the police and the courts. It is highly questionable why the rapist is immediately released on bail, and why the whole case is nearly dismissed before it even reached court. Plus, it is very cruel that a child should provide a detailed statement of such traumatic events at a police station and then again is a bleak menacing court environment, right in front of the defendant. Sadly, these plot devices too are only partly effective. The police are unusually shambolic. The cross-examination scenes are quite improbable.
The top-drawer cast isn’t particularly impressive, and Reeves’s permanently blank face doesn’t always work – particularly in the movie’s most tense moments. Some of the dialogues feel contrived or even didactic as American director and writer Beth de Araújo attempts to explain to viewers the machinations of child trauma. Miles Ross’s music score is gently jarring, with abundant whirring, scratching, distant tub-thumping and electronic beats. The problem is that the non-diegetic sounds become too pervasive – invasive even – as the creators try hard to inject tension into the story artificially. The outcome is that the film reflections are shallow, and there are no significant takeaways.
The film is based on the director’s own experience of witnessing a sexual assault aged eight, and she deserves credit for her bravery. Yet not so much for the artistic achievements. For a genuinely humanistic and heart-wrenching movie based on tragedy experienced by the director at roughly the same age, please watch Carla Simon’s Summer 1993 (2018).
Josephine just premiered in the Official Competition of the 76th Berlinale. The national premiere took place last month at Sundance, where it won the Festival top prize.
