Playing out almost in real time, this 30-minute French domestic drama-turned-thriller proves the power of the short film as a narrative device.
A boy misses school to play under a bridge. Hearing a car arrive, he jumps into the backseat as the woman driving glances at him in the rearview mirror. A girl in tears at a bus stop kisses her boyfriend goodbye and joins the woman and boy in the car. From here the audience is taken on an increasingly tense journey as they piece together the film’s puzzle to reveal the high-stakes drama at hand.
As the film’s suspense increases, so does its potential to branch into melodrama. However Léa Drucker’s restrained performance lends itself to gritty realism rather than soap operatic drama, and writer/director Xavier Legrand paces Just Before Losing Everything perfectly. Within half an hour the cast effectively transform from intriguing strangers to three dimensional characters that have you sitting on the edge of your seat for the entirety of the short.
