thriller film
Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...
Scoot McNairy
John Marcus "Scoot" McNairy (born November 11, 1977) is an American actor and film producer. He is known for his roles in ''Monsters'', ''Argo'', ''Killing Them Softly'', '' 12 Years a Slave'', '' Gone Girl'', and '' Batman v Superman: Dawn of J ...
also star as the boy's parents. The film is directed by Christopher Cantwell based on a screenplay by
Darren Lemke
Darren Lemke (born ) is an American screenwriter who has been active in the film industry since the late 1990s. His first major screenwriting credit was for ''Shrek Forever After'' (2010), which he wrote with Josh Klausner. Lemke directed the thri ...
.
The H Collective
The H Collective is a United States-based film finance, production, marketing and distribution company founded in 2017. The company has Chinese and American backers. THC is headquartered in Los Angeles, and it has offices in Shanghai and Berlin. T ...
financed Gran Via's production of the film. Filming took place in
Winnipeg
Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...
, Canada. ''The Parts You Lose'' had its world premiere on March 14, 2019 at the 2019 Sun Valley Film Festival in
Sun Valley, Idaho
Sun Valley is a resort city in the western United States, in Blaine County, Idaho, adjacent to the city of Ketchum in the Wood River valley. The population was 1406 at the 2010 census, down from 1427 in 2000.Samuel Goldwyn Films released the film commercially in the United States on October 4, 2019.
Synopsis
A deaf 10-year-old boy, Wesley, lives on a small farm in
North Dakota
North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the Native Americans in the United States, indigenous Dakota people, Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north a ...
and commutes to a school for the deaf. He is bullied at the school; at home, he has a good relationship with his mother, though not his father. One day he comes across an injured man who he helps recover, and they become friends. The man teaches the boy how to stand up to the school bully and his father. The police come looking for the man, and Wesley struggles with being loyal to his new friend.
Scoot McNairy
John Marcus "Scoot" McNairy (born November 11, 1977) is an American actor and film producer. He is known for his roles in ''Monsters'', ''Argo'', ''Killing Them Softly'', '' 12 Years a Slave'', '' Gone Girl'', and '' Batman v Superman: Dawn of J ...
as Ronnie
Production
''The Parts You Lose'' is directed by Christopher Cantwell based on a screenplay by
Darren Lemke
Darren Lemke (born ) is an American screenwriter who has been active in the film industry since the late 1990s. His first major screenwriting credit was for ''Shrek Forever After'' (2010), which he wrote with Josh Klausner. Lemke directed the thri ...
. The film's production is financed and overseen by
The H Collective
The H Collective is a United States-based film finance, production, marketing and distribution company founded in 2017. The company has Chinese and American backers. THC is headquartered in Los Angeles, and it has offices in Shanghai and Berlin. T ...
. The film originated in 2015 as a German-Canadian co-production based on a screenplay by Lemke and with Dutch director Paula van der Oest attached. Actor Aaron Paul was cast in May of that year, with filming scheduled to begin in the
Manitoba
Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...
province of Canada in the last few months of 2015. By November, Carice van Houten was also cast, with filming having been pushed back to the second quarter of 2016. Van der Oest and Van Houten eventually left the project; these changes and production delays postponed filming.
By June 2017, the production-financing entity The H Collective was launched with ''The Parts You Lose'' among a dozen films it began financing. By the following November, Cantwell was hired as the new director to film Lemke's script. British deaf actor Danny Murphy, who is fluent in
British Sign Language
British Sign Language (BSL) is a sign language used in the United Kingdom (UK), and is the first or preferred language among the Deaf community in the UK. Based on the percentage of people who reported 'using British Sign Language at home' on ...
, was cast as the deaf boy who befriends Paul's character. Murphy was cast after an international casting search, supported by
Deaf West Theatre
Deaf West Theatre is a non-profit arts organization based in Los Angeles, California, USA. It is most well known for its Tony Award-nominated productions of '' Big River'' and '' Spring Awakening''.
Deaf West Theatre is led by Artistic Director, ...
, for a hard of hearing actor. In the following December, actors Mary Elizabeth Winstead and
Scoot McNairy
John Marcus "Scoot" McNairy (born November 11, 1977) is an American actor and film producer. He is known for his roles in ''Monsters'', ''Argo'', ''Killing Them Softly'', '' 12 Years a Slave'', '' Gone Girl'', and '' Batman v Superman: Dawn of J ...
were cast as the deaf boy's parents. McNairy had previously starred in the TV series '' Halt and Catch Fire'' (2014–2017), of which Cantwell was one of the creators and showrunners.
Principal photography started in
Winnipeg
Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...
in the Manitoba province of Canada on December 5, 2017. Since Murphy and his character use sign language, producers involved students and staff from Winnipeg's Manitoba School for the Deaf. Joanna Hawkins was hired as an
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
consultant. Students and teachers were also filmed in scenes using sign language. Mary Elizabeth Winstead previously worked with Aaron Paul on Smashed but in this film Paul had completed filming before she arrived and they had no scenes together.
By March 2018, ''The Parts You Lose'' was in post-production. By the following October, the film was officially finished.
Release
''The Parts You Lose'' had its world premiere on March 14, 2019 at the 2019 Sun Valley Film Festival in
Sun Valley, Idaho
Sun Valley is a resort city in the western United States, in Blaine County, Idaho, adjacent to the city of Ketchum in the Wood River valley. The population was 1406 at the 2010 census, down from 1427 in 2000. The film also screened at the
Stony Brook Film Festival
The Stony Brook Film Festival, produced by Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook University, presents a program of new, independent films every summer since 1996. Features and short films from the U.S. and around the world are screened ove ...
on July 26, 2019.
Samuel Goldwyn Films released ''The Parts You Lose'' on October 4, 2019. It had acquired United States distribution rights in the previous March.
Reception
The film review website
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
surveyed and assessed 2 reviews as positive, 2 as mixed, and 2 as negative. It gave an aggregate score of 47 out of 100, which it said indicated "mixed or average reviews". The similar website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
surveyed and, categorizing the reviews as positive or negative, assessed 12 as positive and 6 as negative. Of the , it determined an average rating of 6.4 out of 10. It gave the film a score of 67%.
Richard Roeper of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'' wrote, "Paul and young Danny Murphy are terrific together, with Paul playing a wounded bear growling his lines and Murphy delivering a fully realized performance. And for such a bleak and harsh tale, The Parts You Lose finds some rays of light at the end of the night." Frank Scheck of ''
The Hollywood Reporter
''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...
'' complained about the wasted dramatic potential of the film, "''The Parts You Lose'' somehow manages to be both unmoving and tension-free, wasting the talents of several notable actors in the process."