The first 24 seconds of Swiss director Jasmin Gordon and her co-writer Julien Bouissoux’s The Courageous (Les Courageux) don’t suggest a drama about a single mother’s struggles raising her three children. Instead, it communicates terror and suspense, even a foreboding or haunting presence hidden from our view.
As the camera slowly inches us towards a clearing in a dense patch of trees, we hear leaves rustling in the wind and an ominous musical hum. It’s easy to imagine we’re inside some unseen character’s disoriented point of view. We may even think we’re watching a horror film.
From this intriguing if not jarring choice of shot, The Courageous cuts to a scene inside a noisy car with Jule (Ophélia Kolb), and her children, Claire (Jasmine Kalisz Saurer), Loïc (Paul Besnier), and Sami (Arthur Devaux). There’s chaos as Jule rummages through the glove compartment while she’s driving, sees the flash from a speed camera, swears, and apologises to her children for her profanity.
Suddenly, the film begins to align with our expectations. This razor-sharp tonal shift, however, is like we’ve come in at the tail-end of a nightmare, before our eyes open and we are awake.
Auteurs of British social realist cinema like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh have sought to champion those marginalized by society, challenging unsympathetic bureaucracy and cultural indifference. Gordon and Bouissoux are doing something similar in The Courageous by placing their audience inside the point of view of Jule. She’s a character on the fringes, who is required to wear an ankle tag, is behind on her rent, and whose children have to share one glass of lemonade between them at a café.
When Jule seeks support from a social institution that helps tenants find housing, the assessor rarely acknowledges her. In response to Jule’s concerns about her son Loïc changing schools, he says, “children always adapt in the end.” He even shows a narrow-minded point of view about autism and Asperger’s by suggesting they’re “pretty much all the same.”
When Jule reveals that she’s three months behind on rent and explains she needs to stop the financial hemorrhaging, he admonishes her for saying “I” instead of “we”. He tells Jule, “We are not here to help mothers realize their personal aspirations.”
Even the questions Loïc’s teacher asks him are intended to coerce him into declaring that he and his siblings are neglected. In a late scene, the teacher uses the provocative phrase, “…someone like you” when he and Jule clash over her failure to observe parking rules at the school.
The Courageous is distanced from Loach and Leigh’s social realist cinema in the same way that the Belgian filmmakers, the Dardenne Brothers, have their own sensibility. What these films and filmmakers have in common, however, is an interest in the marginalized and forgotten, which places them in conversation with one another.
This type of cinema has always had a horror-esque vibe. It’s not horror in the context of the supernatural or by appropriating traditional horror tropes. Instead, similar to British and European social realist cinema, The Courageous explores the horror of the human experience, where the predatory forces are not supernatural entities or masked killers, but bureaucratic indifference, societal prejudice, and a general small-mindedness.
Films likeTheCourageousshould unsettle, if not frighten us, because they show a reality whereby our basic needs for safety, food, clothing, and shelter are threatened. These films tap into the horror that’s triggered by a threat to human survival and wellbeing. They do this using cinema’s capacity to put viewers inside another’s experience and compel sympathy or empathy through that connection.
Reconsidered in this context, The Courageous’ horror-esque opening complements the inherent darkness that resides within its soul. The moody and atmospheric vibe of the shot captures that feeling of being overwhelmed and being thrust into a survival response. It taps into the trepidation we should feel towards others and the cruel, unforgiving, and unsympathetic nature that prevails in much of society.
As Jule says to the assessor, “I see that it’s convenient for you that I take care of my son’s problems all on my own, in my corner, keeping my mouth shut. But as soon as I ask for help from institutions that exist for this sole purpose, then, of course, there’s dead silence.”
There’s no mistaking that The Courageous is rooted in anger and frustration, but there’s an abundance of love in this story of a woman trying to prove to herself and her children that she’s a good mother and a good person. The Courageous is inherently a story about struggle and the permanence of our choices.
Interestingly, Gordon and Bouissoux are careful not to reveal too much. There’s plenty to infer about Jule, but the director and her co-writer are keen to impress on the audience that she is the total sum of her parts and should not be defined by one aspect of her personality or even a single choice. The Courageous encourages sympathy instead of judgement, and homes in on the efforts of the resilient spirit of its heroine to move forward when her circumstances keep knocking her back.
For all her flaws, Jule is guilty of losing herself to hope. In her efforts to prove she’s a good mother, hope comes in the form of an empty house for sale. The problem is that she will never be able to meet the asking price, and so, she naïvely clings to hope, more so out of desperation to create stability for herself and her children. She wants to stop the hemorrhaging, but her desperation only compels self-destructive choices.
Gordon and Bouissoux carefully construct an image of a woman backed into a corner, and in response, Jule’s resilient, reckless, and impulsive spirit spares the film from sinking into the depths of despair. The Courageous is a story where circumstances might be bleak, but the characters find a reason to laugh with one another and maybe even laugh back at life through their resolve and camaraderie.
Where Gordon and Bouissoux excel is in evolving the family dynamic by creating layers. Early inThe Courageous, Jule asks the children whether they’re telling her the truth or if they’re telling her a story. As the film’s drama unfolds, the children, especially the eldest, Claire, begin to question what Jule tells them. Through mostly silent expressions, the children ask their mother whether she’s being honest or if she’s telling them a story.
This disrupts the traditional power dynamic in the relationship and raises questions about whether Jule or Claire is the responsible adult. There are moments when Jule resembles an adolescent in a woman’s body, like the time she takes the children to view the house, and when the sales agent turns up, they flee out of the bedroom window to avoid being seen. All of this bleeds intoThe Courageousbeing a portrait of how the mother figure is the defining presence in their childhood, which will loom large throughout their lives.
Jule says that to be courageous is to be free. It’s difficult to believe these characters are ever truly free, but it’s easier to appreciate her point that to have any chance of being free, one must be courageous or at least bold in their choices.
Much of the film is about unrealized hope and daring to imagine and believe what might be possible. This shapes The Courageous into a tough film with a lot of heart, that doesn’t lose itself in a political or message-oriented cinematic tradition. Instead,The Courageouspicks its moments to be genuinely impactful and reminds us why we should be worried about the society we seek to make a home in and belong to.
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