The Courageous

Bluesky

“Are you shameless?” the woman running the café asks Clare (Jasmine Kalisz Saurer), when it becomes apparent that the girl’s mother, who has left her there with her brothers Loïc (Paul Besnier) and Sami (Arthur Deavaux), is unlikely to return. She’s angry because the children have been nursing a single glass of lemonade and the little one has been running around as little ones do, but there have been no other customers there for them to disturb. Exactly why the child should feel shame over a situation she did not choose is not made clear. For that matter, it’s never really clear why such a weight of approbation should be attached to her mother, all things considered, though as the story first develops, you too may find her hard to like.

It’s not easy to feel warm towards someone who lies and engages in pretty theft on a frequent basis – someone who might seem to be a friend and then show no consideration for your feelings. At least, not unless you turn it around and look at it a different way: Jule (Ophélia Kolb) puts her children before anything else, and for their sake she’s desperate to get out of the poverty trap that she finds herself in. She’s in Switzerland but people elsewhere in the world who have had to depend on state welfare systems will find it easy to relate to this struggle. Every time she makes a little bit of progress, something else comes up to knock her back. nobody seems to sympathise – in fact she seems to be completely bereft of adult friends to talk to.

Clare is at the awkward age where she’s old enough to know that her mother needs help but not old enough to get her to admit it. When they go swimming in a lake, Jule tells her that her curfew tag is an ankle support; the girl doesn’t know any better, but more generally, she is aware that she is being lied to. In a heartbreaking scene, the kinds jump around and play in the house for Jule has been desperately trying to save a deposit, and which they already think will be theirs, to the strains of Build Me Up Buttercup. “Why do you build me up...just to let me down, and then mess me around?”

As Jule strives ceaselessly – and courageously – to make their dream possible, viewers might come to look at her in a different light, and to understand the effects of a life like this. Every time she shoplifts, she knows she’s placing herself at risk, knows she could be separated from the kids she’s doing it for. That she has coped for this long is perhaps due to the presence of a genuine rebellious streak. With her blond bob of hair, she might make one think of an older, calmer version of Helena Zengel’s 2019 System Crasher. Disastrous though the consequences could be, she is at her most glorious and compelling in the brief moments when she loses her temper.

Clare is not subject to the same compulsions. She loves her mother, but she’s beginning to look at the world in a different way. In an early scene when the children find themselves running across a motorway, her terror is visible – not so much for herself, but for little Sami. For how much longer will she be prepared to live like this? Will Jule’s fierce love be enough to keep the family together? Director Jasmin Gordon, handling her début feature with confidence and sensitivity, has said that a lot of personal experience has gone into shaping it. It is redolent with the pain of being treated as less human than others, but there is also humour and the thrill that comes from life lived in the moment, with Jule’s sheer resourcefulness making her a compelling character to watch. Kolb and Saurer are both impressive and the edgy chemistry they generate makes this something special.

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