The Courageous opens with dense greenery, as sunlit and idyllic as it is discouragingly impenetrable. Then, with barely the rising sound of an engine to warn us, we cut back to urban humanity: a hand slams a glove compartment shut, with the tense “merde” of a woman on edge. And so we meet the protagonists of the film: Julia, or Jule, at the wheel of the car, and her three children giggling on the back seat because mum just said a naughty word.
Another cut, this time behind Jule’s head, reveals the breathtaking mountain scenery of the Swiss Valais. In just over a minute we meet the people and places, the tensions and contrasts, that drive the film, even if full understanding will only come to us gradually. Jule, a rebellious young woman bringing up her children alone, is fundamentally at odds with the ordered society of rural Switzerland, and in consequence her life is a constant struggle.
The Courageous is director Jasmin Gordon’s first feature film. It lies within the strong tradition of engaged social realism that, in Britain, we associate with Ken Loach, but the genre has its own life across the channel too, with eminent exponents like Laurent Cantet in France or the brothers Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne in Belgium.
