previously published on Cineuropa
“Fortune favours the bold,” goes the old proverb. But in our modern lifestyle, it takes way more than just courage to secure a comfortable and happy life. Things are more complicated when there is more than one person involved. When it comes to a family setting, all the courage, love and care in the world will not suffice; it also takes deftness in navigating the social landscape. There are no simple solutions or straight paths to a happy ending. This we can learn from Jasmin Gordon’s debut feature, The Courageous, which has just premiered in Toronto’s Discovery section.
Jule (Ophelia Kolb, mostly active on television) is a single mother of three children, Claire, Loïc and Sami (played by newcomers Jasmine Kalisz Saurer, Paul Besnier and Arthur Devaux, respectively). As soon as we have met them all, she leaves her kids waiting in a cafe next to a shopping centre, with one lemonade for the three of them to share, using the well-worn “just for five minutes” excuse. It is obvious that she has done this before, and it’s quite probable that she has no other option. Sensing the intervention of the authorities, the children eventually run away from the cafe and head home on foot after a somewhat risky journey. When she comes back, she finds them sound asleep.
It is safe to assume that Jule is not the greatest provider, but it is more difficult to answer the question of whether or not she is a bad mother. In short, she is not – she clearly loves her children and cares for them enough to put on a smile and come up with a “convincing” excuse for her behaviour. They also love her back and are more than ready to support her claims in front of the school and civil authorities. The trouble is that they are poor in the very affluent Valais county of Switzerland, and it shows. Additionally, Jule has some kind of criminal past behind her, so her ability to move both literally and metaphorically (ie, up the social ladder) is very limited. Maybe settling down for good will save them, but when the house Jule wants to buy gets sold to another client, she has to improvise to keep the hope alive, which leads her to a risky move that will have permanent consequences…
The Courageous is a film that leaves the viewer with a lot of unanswered questions. For instance, where is the children’s father (or where are their fathers, if there were more than one), what exactly was Jule’s crime in the past, and what is her current occupation? The best the audience can get are hints that the family has moved multiple times and that at least Claire is aware that their mum is not telling her and her brothers the truth. However, this kind of secrecy is actually the strong point of Julien Bouissoux’s script, which limits our perspective and forces us to focus on the relationship between Jule and the kids, their self-sufficiency when she is gone, and her resolution to keep the family together and afloat by any means necessary.
The same discretion is matched by a fitting execution in both the artistic and the technical aspects of the film. Kolb never misses her mark as the troubled mother, and the chemistry between the child actors as siblings is compelling. The hand-held cinematography by Andi Widmer and the minimal sound design by Pascal Schärli add to the almost-documentary feel, broken only by the tense, abstract music by Mirjam Skall. In the end, The Courageous is a sure-handed debut and a convincing piece of cinematic social realism.