Adam’s Sake – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Adam’s Sake – first-look review

15 May 2025

Words by Hannah Strong

Young person with dark hair gazing intently, wearing colourful patterned top.
Young person with dark hair gazing intently, wearing colourful patterned top.
Lau­ra Wan­del’s sec­ond fea­ture unrav­els the com­plex­i­ty of a moth­er-son rela­tion­ship with­in the con­fines of a pae­di­atric ward.

When we first meet the tiny mop­pet Adam (Jules Del­sart) he is lying in a hos­pi­tal bed with a feed­ing tube down his nose. At his side is his moth­er Rebec­ca (Ana­maria Var­tolomei) and head nurse Lucy (Léa Druck­er) who both have the boy’s best inter­ests at heart – right? The hos­pi­tal staff aren’t so sure. Despite Rebecca’s insis­tence that Adam has some sort of stom­ach con­di­tion that makes a reg­u­lar diet unfea­si­ble, Adam is mal­nour­ished with brit­tle bones. Rebec­ca won’t feed him a prop­er diet; if Rebec­ca isn’t present, Adam won’t eat at all. Lucy finds her­self in an impos­si­ble posi­tion, try­ing to act with­in the best inter­ests of her young patient while the hos­pi­tal staff breathe down her neck and the sin­gle moth­er becomes increas­ing­ly desperate.

The stark real­ism Wan­del demon­strat­ed in her har­row­ing debut Play­ground is on show again, with plen­ty of hand­held cam­eras track­ing Lucy as she buzzes around the cor­ri­dors of the hos­pi­tal, treat­ing not only Adam but her oth­er young patients, many of whom are in equal­ly per­ilous sit­u­a­tions. Fans of HBO Max’s 2025 med­ical dra­ma The Pitt might recog­nise the real-time anx­i­ety of Lucy’s shift, as she tries to pro­vide care under incred­i­ble bureau­crat­ic pres­sure and stretched resources with­in the health­care sys­tem. Léa Druck­er, a Cannes main­stay and depend­ably great screen pres­ence, brings a sense of poise and com­pe­tence to her role, even giv­en the dire cir­cum­stances, while Hap­pen­ing break­out Ana­maria Var­tolomei is sym­pa­thet­ic as the moth­er kick­ing against a restric­tive system.

Wan­del avoids easy answers – Adam’s Sake is decid­ed­ly with­hold­ing of the facts, nev­er quite reveal­ing if Rebec­ca is act­ing in her son’s best inter­ests or suf­fer­ing from a psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion her­self. This is a strength, as it demon­strates the nuance of her sit­u­a­tion and indeed many real life cas­es for young at-risk chil­dren where there is no straight­for­ward hero or vil­lain. Yet its tight 76-minute run­time does leave us a lit­tle in the lurch – there’s a sense that some vital piece of the puz­zle here is miss­ing, while Rebecca’s fraught rela­tion­ship with her ex (Adam’s father) veers a lit­tle towards cul­tur­al clichés about absent fathers.

Yet there’s no ques­tion­ing Wandel’s can­dor, or her inter­est in approach­ing dif­fi­cult sub­jects with­out danc­ing around them. As in Play­ground, she cap­tures a remark­able per­for­mance from her young lead (here Jules Del­sart) while speak­ing truth to pow­er about the fun­da­men­tal fail­ings with­in the sys­tems designed to pro­tect the most vulnerable.

You might like