52 Films by Women Vol 10. 29. SILENT REBELLION (À bras-le-corps) (Director: Marie-Elsa Sgualdo)

 

Pictured: Fifteen-year-old Emma (Lila Gueneau, right) dances with her husband Paul (Thomas Doret) in a scene from the Swiss film, À bras-le-corps (Silent Rebellion), co-written and directed by Marie-Elsa Sgualdo. Still courtesy of Salaud Morriset. 

What is neutrality? A conscious effort to recuse yourself from responsibility? Allowing events take their course without consideration of the outcome? Neutrality is an illusion, a pretence, a position taken to avoid conflict with others by formally treating all parties the same but pragmatically engaging with some parties more than others. Neutrality is diplomatic acquiescence. It is how Switzerland conducted itself in World War Two (1939-45).

Swiss film director Marie-Elsa Sgualdo sets her debut feature film Silent Rebellion (À bras-le-corps) in her native country - specifically a village bordering France in the Swiss Jura - in 1943. Co-written (with Sgualdo) by Nadine Lamari, it follows fifteen-year-old Emma (Lila Gueneau) as she negotiates virtue at a time when Nazis operated on the Swiss border and when necessary (as shown in the film) encroached it. Switzerland was no safe haven. Foreigners escaping persecution were turned away from Swiss borders, following a cessation of asylum that began in late 1942. Their subsequent capture was considered immaterial, a price to pay for the preservation of the country, which otherwise could not defend itself against Germany.

Silent Rebellion does not explicitly address the conduct of Switzerland towards refugees, except in so far as the film’s moral centre, Pastor Robert (Grégoire Colin) registers his guilty inaction by consuming steadily increasing amounts of alcohol. Emma works in the Pastor’s household and at one point swipes a glass out of his grasp. For her part, spotting a refugee in the forest, she directs them to run away and tells a group of Nazi soldiers who by their own admission ‘aren’t supposed to be there’ that she has seen nothing. In other films, this might be an inciting incident, but Emma does not meet the refugee again.

Rather the film addresses the perceived conduct of women. Emma hates her mother Alice (Sandrine Blancke) because she cultivated a relationship out of wedlock - or at least that is he official version. When Alice visits the village where Emma and her younger siblings live with her father (Aurélien Patouillard), Emma ignores her. Alice brought shame on the family and Emma responds in kind.

Perceived virtue isn’t just rewarded in the village with admiring looks, it comes with a cash prize, one that will enable Emma to study nursing with her best friend, Colette (Sasha Gravat), the Pastor’s daughter. At the start of the film, she stands before a panel of the virtuous, making her case. The Pastor’s wife (Aurélia Petit) thinks Emma is a shoo-in. However, a guest of the Pastor’s derails her.

He is Louis (Cyril Metzger), a young journalist who writes not about the war but soil; the Pastor is surprised by his non-political subject matter. Emma is invited to a picnic with Louis, Collette and another young man. During the picnic, Louis leads Emma up a steep incline and while they are both alone, he helps himself to non-consensual sex. Sgualdo focuses on Emma’s hand scrunching up grass as she endures the rape. Later, she discovers she is pregnant. Taking a day off, she travels to the house where Louis is staying. He opens the gate and ensures his guests – we hear an Englishwoman’s voice – do not see her. Louis dismisses her. ‘How can I be sure it is mine?’ he asks. Emma’s options decrease.

In the film’s most harrowing scene, Emma stands and places the tip of a heated wire coat hanger between her legs, covered by a skirt. She winces. This is insufficient to abort the child. Instead, she agrees to marry Paul (Thomas Doret), a border guard who is smitten with her. This initially brings her some degree of happiness – Paul welcomes the baby boy as his own - though she is forced to quit the Pastor’s household and bid au revoir to a career in nursing. However, Paul proves to be a very controlling husband, insisting that she remain in the house and spend no time looking at books. When the Pastor is replaced, Emma asks for the opportunity to work for him. Paul refuses.

Finally, Emma rebels, taking her child and visiting her mother who works at a munitions factory – surely the clearest indictment of Switzerland’s so-called neutrality. Emma takes a job there, telling the manager that she also has bookkeeping stills; she is also good at needlepoint. Her role involves ensuring that bullets are fed evenly into a magazine for use in a submachine gun. She is offered a different role that makes use of her mathematical skills by a wanton supervisor looking for sex, but refuses.

‘Come back with my son,’ pleads Paul, who visits Emma at her new digs and is enduring shame of his own. Emma refuses. Her attempts to get some needlework on the side bears fruit as she undercuts the going rate of a haberdashery shop’s usual provider – so long as she supplies more than one decorated piece of fabric.

Emma makes her peace with her mother, but then the film takes a leap. We see Emma dancing at the end of the war. She is happier.

The English title and the setting led me to expect something more substantial. Silent Rebellion is a film of small victories, celebrating resilience over adversity. What it doesn’t do is mount a sustained attack on the patriarchy. Sgualdo leaves the audience with a few questions, such as what happens to Emma and her mother after the munitions factory closes. The film is aimed at Swiss audiences, asking them to reconsider their understanding of what their grandparents did in the war. It tells us that virtue is never white and neutrality is never clear.

Reviewed at Filmhuis den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands, Sunday 28 June 2026, 16:15 screening