Josephine and the Roach (2012)

As Good As It Gets

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Josephine is a quiet woman who lives with her much gruffer and uncommunicative husband. She finds pleasure in playing her accordion in another room, while he watches the gogglebox for hours on end (ahem). Unbeknownst to her, she has a neighbor and admirer living just inside the walls of her apartment – a cockroach who also loves his music, and longs for the day when the love he knows they could share, will become a reality.There isn't really a way to describe this short film without making it sound like it is a pretty weird affair; there is a reason for this – and it is because essentially it is a weird film. A story of the longing of a cockroach and the openness of the kindred spirit he seeks to connect with, it was never going to be the most straightforward thing and it was of interest to me how it would pitch it. Fortunately the film leads with fairy-tale level of darkness, so a type of weirdness that is not too dark, but at the same time doesn't try to Disneyfy everything to make it smoother and cuter. Instead what it has is charm.The setting is a sort of 1950's world of fantasy and whimsy, but also of oppression and lack of love – again not in an overly heavy way, but just enough to work in broad strokes. The main characters and their feelings are also presented in this way – with an acceptance of the Tim Burton-esque weirdness of them, but at the same time a lovely charm and delicateness to them. The Roach of the title is a fixed puppet animated in stop-motion with limited features to play with for expression; the film overcomes this with good use of music and body language to convey his feelings. It goes an odd route, but in the end it is quite sentimental – which would usually be a problem for me. The reason this aspect worked here was that the film gets the balance just right; the sentimental core exists within this darker fantasy world, and I found that one balanced the other out well. Similarly the film managed to also make the Roach be both appealing, but also still as gross as cockroaches actually are in real life (where they play a lot fewer violins in my experience).An oddity of a short for sure, and perhaps it runs a little long and could have been tighter, but regardless it is well judged to balance the odd and the sweet in all aspects, producing a charming little fantasy of a short film.

One of my favorite categories of films is the "Shorts" category. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's my attentional difficulties. Anyway, it's amazing to me what can be conveyed in just 15 minutes. Perhaps that's one of the MANY reasons I don't watch TV. It just doesn't give me enough in the specified time period. This was not the case with "Josephine and the Roach." This 15 minute short was visually enticing and beautiful. The story, which is extremely unique, captured my heart.Josephine was a woman in a very stifling marriage living in an antiquated 1960's feeling grungy apartment in NYC. For those of you who have lived in cities, you know that roaches are an eminent co-inhabitant. In Josephine's apartment lived a very special roach. A roach that loved music and could play the violin. Josephine's only love and happiness came from playing the accordion. It was through their love of music that enabled another type of love to blossom. But how could a roach and a human possibly work? The roach devised a plan.This brilliantly colorful and visually captivating film told a love story with not a word spoken. I actually had to watch the film twice to make sure that that was accurate. In my mind, I heard dialogue, but there was none. The power of music paired with gorgeous cinematography that felt at times like a cartoon, empowered the viewer to not need words. The only words that were spoken were from an old-time TV commercial. This technique worked. My heart ached for Josephine's isolation and abuse from her lazy, beer-drinking slug of a husband. The computer graphics of the roach made me root for the roach! The music enveloped me to help me feel all the emotions that each of the characters felt. How could I possibly be pulled in to a film about a roach and a lonely woman falling in love? It was easy!

A woman- Josephine - and a cockroach. An unlikely pairing, but I love the story. I could not guess how the writers were going to bring it to a conclusion. Nicely crafted and animated. I'm a musician, so I liked that aspect. I was afraid it was going to get too dark for me, but I was not disappointed with the story line. It is a little tricky to make a relationship between a human (well, an animated human) and an insect seem plausible, but something pulls at your heartstrings and you can't help but pull for the cockroach, despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles he faces. (I would like to know a little back story on the cockroach. How did he some by his violin playing skills?) A nice effort and worth watching.