Cinema

'Nothing to Lose', a French family drama with an intense Virginie Efira

Delphine Deloget's fiction feature debut, presented at last year's Cannes Film Festival, arrives in cinemas

by Andrea Chimento

17 May 2024

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3' min read

Key points

Questions involving
IF - The Imaginary Friends

3' min read

Virginie Efira is once again starring in our theatres: after seeing her in 'The Courage of Blanche', released a couple of weeks ago, the Belgian naturalised French actress returns to Italian screens with 'Nothing to Lose', Delphine Deloget's fiction feature debut.

The transalpine director, who prior to this film had devoted herself mainly to documentaries and television productions, clearly retains the stylistic inspirations of the cinema of reality in this transition to fiction cinema.

“Niente da perdere” e gli altri film della settimana
Photogallery4 foto

At the centre of the story is Sylvie, a single mother with two children to look after, Sofiane and Jean-Jacques.

The three live in Brest and their life is rather messy: one day, while Sylvie is at work, Sofiane injures herself at home and ends up in hospital. The social services intervene, considering that the domestic situation is not safe enough and choosing to take Sofiane away from his mother.

Sylvie thus starts a real legal battle to get her son back.

Presented in the Un certain regard section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, 'Nothing to Lose' is a film that confronts a courageous mother (and willing to do anything to regain family harmony) and a bureaucratic machine that wants to protect minors, even at the cost of removing them from their homes.

In spite of a few overly clumsy narrative passages, the script succeeds in finding sufficient overall fulfilment, thanks mainly to the characterisation of the various characters on stage, who are credible and written with the appropriate care.

Questions involving

Underlying this strongly moral - if somewhat moralising - feature film are a series of questions that end up powerfully involving the viewer: where is reason? Can maternal affection actually make up for shortcomings and how much can or should the state intervene to protect young people?

These are not simple doubts posed by 'Nothing to Lose', a feature film that is capable of shaking us up and interestingly leads us to consider all the positions at stake, making us reason and reflect on what we are seeing.

It is a pity that the film loses some of its polish as the conclusion approaches, thus failing to stick in the memory as it could and would have done.

A remarkable performance by Virginie Efira, who confirms herself as one of the most intense actresses on the contemporary European scene, but the rest of the cast also does their job fairly well (the young Alexis Tonetti, as Sofiane, in particular).

IF - The Imaginary Friends

Very different tones are those of 'IF - The Imaginary Friends', a film for the whole family directed by John Krasinski.

It stars Ryan Reynolds as a man with an extraordinary gift: that of seeing and hearing the voices of other people's imaginary friends.

Most people, once they become adults, turn away from the imaginary friends that accompanied them in their childhood. These creatures continue to exist but feel abandoned and cast aside once real friends take their place.

A very simple film but nevertheless capable of being enjoyable and not without some noteworthy ideas, 'IF - The Imaginary Friends' is a colourful product, capable of arousing curiosity and confirming Krasinski's good creative vein behind the camera.

Admittedly, it is somewhat alienating to think that the American actor and director directed this feature film after two horror films such as 'A Quiet Place' and its sequel, but Krasinski certainly does not lack the desire to experiment. A greater narrative and directorial solidity, however, would be necessary to make his films less the victim of those moments of fatigue that are also felt here in several passages.