Virginie Efira can play anything. Tormented lawyer (Victoria2016), devout (Benedetta2021), victim of a terrorist act (See Paris again2022) or trapped in a toxic relationship (Love and forests2023), she turns everything she touches into gold.
This is particularly true in Nothing to loseby Delphine Deloget, in which a mother confronts the judicial administration in order to regain custody of her son – a proposition which, without the impeccable performance of the Franco-Belgian actress, would struggle to rise above melodrama.
Sylvie (Efira) takes care of her two sons, Jean-Jacques (Félix Lefebvre) and Sofiane (Alexis Tonetti), alone in Brest. One night, while she is at the bar where she works as a waitress, Sofiane burns her hand and torso to the second degree while trying to cook fries — her brother did not come home at the expected time. .
Alerted by the caregivers who take care of the kid in the hospital, the child protection agency decides to place Sofiane in a home, according to a precautionary principle which aims to rule out the possibility of abuse. Convinced of being the victim of a miscarriage of justice, Sylvie launches into a fierce battle – in which every emotion can prove to be a trap – in order to regain custody of her son.
On this side of the Atlantic, it is difficult to support the proposal. Although social services are not immune to tragic errors and blunders, it is difficult to imagine that a mother would have her child taken away from one day to the next without further ado, that she would be deprived of her rights. visit when the faults are more contextual than linked to neglect or mistreatment, that the involvement of close family is ruled out to the detriment of an adoption in an unknown and distant environment.
This not very credible, but effective, scenario is therefore rather put at the service of the heroine – and, incidentally, of her actress -, of her emotional complexity, of the social, economic and identity constructions which have delimited her journey and her family life.
Delphine Deloget’s camera moves as close as possible to faces and bodies to capture the urgency, the distress, the panic of a mother who feels the ground slipping away from under her feet, who sees her bear’s instincts turn against her. She. Even if the filmmaker does not hesitate to highlight the flaws of her protagonist and to leave room for judgment for the viewer, she does not succeed in qualifying her point of view – she offers no warmth or liveliness to the representatives of the protection of childhood — nor to instill in his story the doubts and the ambiguity which would have elevated it to the rank of a great work.
Everything still arouses a lot of emotion, in addition to raising relevant questions about the expectations that weigh on mothers whose “village” is increasingly failing. Unfortunately, a finale that flirts with extremes cuts short these reflections for which we would have liked more down-to-earth conclusions.