2023-11-21 20:33:16
Nothing to lose ***
by Delphine Deloget
French film, 1h52
Sylvie (Virginie Efira) is a mother like many others. Single, raising two children alone from two different fathers, undoubtedly failing, she does everything to get by and offer them the best living conditions.
Leaves working at night as a barmaid in a club in Brest, the last vestige of a youth spent in the music world. Neither really precarious nor marginal, but constantly on the edge of a life that refuses the shackles of the norm and has distanced her from part of her family. At the mercy of the grain of sand that can derail everything.
It presents itself one evening in the form of a domestic accident. His youngest son, Sofiane, sets fire to the kitchen while trying to make fries and is injured while he is alone at home and his mother at work. He was taken to the emergency room and a report was made to social services. Precautionary principle on the part of healthcare personnel who track cases of mistreatment and think they are acting for the best.
Sofiane is placed in a shelter while waiting for an investigation to be carried out and a final decision to be made. Sure of her rights and the love of her children, Sylvie hires a lawyer and plans to quickly get her son back. This means taking into account the administrative and judicial machine, which the mother, with the help of her two brothers, will try to fight by all means.
Two reasons clash
Director Delphine Deloget, who comes from documentaries, researched at length about foster children before writing this first film, which hits the mark incredibly well. The ordinary story of an extraordinary tragedy, that of the unwilling separation of a mother and her child.
“When we talk about placement, we imagine the worst: incest, mistreatment, abuse, etc. However, 70% to 80% of child placements are ordered following a “failure”: disoriented parents, difficult children to manage, educational deficiency, unsuitable housing, families in debt. Situations which, far from being exceptional, can create an infernal spiral”, she explains.
In Nothing to lose, two logics confront each other, each of which has its own reasons, and the film never seeks to decide, avoiding any simplistic Manichaeism. The psychologizing jargon of educators, armed with overplayed benevolence – formidable India Hair – responds to the instability of a mother whose excessive behavior reveals her faults.
As for his unconditional love for his children, it does not prevent his youngest from suffering from some failings. The eldest, Jean-Jacques, is nursing a past as a bulimic, while the younger one visibly suffers from attention problems. “It takes a little more than the love of a family to raise a child,” an educator coldly asserts.
A mother who is both upsetting and irritating
But beyond this concern for documentary truth, the strength of the film is to make it fantastic material for fiction. A thrilling social drama that draws us alongside its heroine in a fight that seems lost in advance. As in Full timeby Éric Gravel, who followed Laure Calamy in her daily struggle as a divorced mother, the camera never lets go of Virginie Efira and gets in tune with her instinctive character by cutting scenes before the end of the action to move on to the next one , giving this impression of endless racing.
The actress, in her full artistic maturity, is exceptional. And shows the certainty of her choices even though the film, difficult to finance, could never have been made without her. She paints the portrait of a woman full of ambiguities, both overwhelming and irritating, constantly on the verge of explosion, whose behavior sometimes borders on madness.
At his side Arieh Worthalter, recently noticed in The Goldman Trial, and Mathieu Demy, in the role of Sylvie’s two brothers who are completely opposite, form the two sides of this warm family, one following his desires, the other aspiring to normality. The heroine evolves exactly on the border between the two, but she is ready to do anything to make maternal love triumph.
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A director from documentary
Delphine Deloget is a director and documentary maker born in 1975 in Paimpol (Côtes-d’Armor)
Initially trained in documentary production, she subsequently joined a script workshop at Fémis to work on a fiction project.
She has directed three feature-length documentaries dont No London Today in 2008 and Journey to BarbaryAlbert-London Prize 2015.
She directs her first short fiction filmSanta Claus and the Cowboy in 2012, followed by Tigre, selected at the Berlin International Festival in 2019.
In 2023, his first fiction feature film,Nothing to loseis presented at the Cannes Film Festival in the “Un certain regard” section.
#lose #ambiguities #mother