The Courageous Review
There are endless routes to explore when it comes to the complex experience of motherhood. With her debut feature, The Courageous, Jasmin Gordon crafts an intimate and emotionally charged portrait of a single mother facing a pivotal moment in her life.
Jule (Ophélia Kolb) is a single mother of three. We first meet her as she drops off her children—Claire (Jasmine Kalisz Saurer), Loïc (Paul Besnier), and Sami (Arthur Devaux)— at a local restaurant, assuring them she’ll return in five minutes. But time passes, and Jule doesn’t come back. Concerned and confused, the children decide to walk home on their own, crossing a busy dual carriageway along the way. This opening sequence immediately sets the tone for the film. It offers a glimpse into the kind of mother Jule is: well-meaning, perhaps, but unreliable, distracted, or on the verge of personal collapse. The tension between her intentions and her actions becomes a persistent thread throughout the story.
Eldest daughter Claire is beginning to outgrow the childhood belief that parents always know best. She starts to question the inconsistencies in her mother’s behaviour, especially when Jule wraps a bleeping black ankle monitor in clingfilm before joining her children for a swim at the lake. Claire probes, confused by her mother’s evasive claim that the device is a medical aid for weak ankles. It’s a quiet but telling moment, as Claire’s curiosity begins to pierce the veil of half-truths and protective fictions her mother has built around them. The scene also hints at deeper troubles in Jule’s life, which The Courageous reveals gradually, through the perceptive eyes of her children.
We see Jule’s fierce determination to keep her family afloat, clinging to a dream of buying a quiet house in the Swiss countryside. At first, she tries to follow the correct path, applying for loans, navigating letting agencies, and playing by the rules. However, when those doors close, her desperation takes over, and she quickly resorts to stealing to keep her plans alive. In these moments of struggle, The Courageous lays bare the peaks and troughs of motherhood. In touching, beautifully crafted scenes—like when Jule fakes a mess in the kitchen to pretend she’s baked a cake from scratch, or when she dances with her children to Build Me Up Buttercup, we see a mother trying to shield her children from instability with joy. Yet these moments exist alongside darker ones in which Jules compares herself bitterly to other mothers, or turns to violence to justify her erratic behaviour. The contrast is striking and sometimes difficult to watch, but it’s an honest and complex depiction of motherhood teetering on the edge.
Gordon’s hopeful, lingering shots of the Swiss countryside juxtaposed with Jule’s crumbling financial reality create a poignant and emotionally layered story. While Jule’s behaviour is often selfish and exasperating, Gordon carefully finds a way to present Jule as a woman whose flaws are inseparable from her fierce love for her children. “Even when you cheat, you still can’t win,” Jule tells her daughter when the police arrive at their doorstep. In that quiet confession, we see a woman who, despite her poor choices, is driven by a desperate desire to build something better for her family. It’s this emotional honesty that makes both Jule and the film so deeply compelling.
Ophélia Kolb is wonderful in the lead role, portraying Jule as a no-nonsense mother determined to provide for her family, no matter how out of reach her dreams may seem. We come to understand her so well through Kolb’s natural, restrained performance. The cracks of her voice as she pleads for extra help, or the quiet tears that fall while she spends time with her children, make even Jule’s most questionable decisions feel heartbreakingly human. The Courageous is an impressive debut feature, solidifying Jasmin Gordon as a voice to watch out for in the future.
★★★★
In cinemas September 5th/ Ophélia Kolb, Jasmine Kalisz Saurer, Paul Besnier, Arthur Devaux / Dir: Jasmin Gordon / MetFilm Distribution / 12A
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