TIFF 2024 Review: The Courageous – “a documentary feel to the proceedings.”

A single mother attempts to find a permanent home for herself and three children but is undermined by her own ineptitude.

A mother and her three children are on a road trip when they stop at a restaurant where she steps outside for a minute and does not return causing her offspring to make their own way home; later at night she returns and affectionately puts them to bed. There is always an explanation for the parental absences which invariably lack believability.  A major aspiration is being able to own a home which the matriarch decides to show her daughter and two sons rather than take them to school.

Things begin to spiral further out of control when the desired real estate purchase gets bought by someone else and she is left to scramble to get money from stealing to government assistance in an effort to usurp the deal.

In some ways, those who have the least get the most out of living than wealthy individuals always competing against each other.  Despite this heartwarming truth, it is still hard to watch parental unreliability that continually puts children at risk.  The highway crossing of the children upon being left behind, which is more hinted at than depicted, screams of recklessness and body bags thereby undermining any empathy for Jule.  A key line that heightens the sense of desperation is when Jule tells her daughter Claire that she can’t get ahead even by cheating.

The intimacy and immediacy of scenes are elevated by the handheld camerawork that gives a documentary feel to the proceedings.  A mystical quality is given to a breeze blowing in the forest which perhaps represents a sense of peace and freedom that is the ultimate goal.   However, all of the noise caused by life is getting in the way.  The best part of the whole cinematic affair are child actors Jasmine Kalisz Saurer, Paul Besnier, and Arthur Devaux as they truly behave as siblings who care and look after each other despite their mother’s failings.  You really wish the best for them and hope that when on their own they will face a far brighter future.

The 49th Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5-15, 2024, and for more information visit tiff.net.    

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada; he can be found at LinkedIn.