Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Nothing To Hide’ On Netflix, A French Film About Smartphones Ruining A Perfectly Good Dinner Party

Ever wanted to know what was going on on your partner’s phone? Is your partner curious? Maybe you have nothing to hide… or so you think. The new French dramedy Nothing To Hide is about a group of old friends who find out too much about each other when they leave their smartphones open to the group for an entire dinner party. Will it make you lock your phone for good?

NOTHING TO HIDE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A complete lunar eclipse is about to move over France, and a news report at the beginning of the movie states the legend that during such an eclipse people do strange things, only to not remember them after the eclipse passes. We move through a flat where Vincent (Stéphane De Groodt), a plastic surgeon, is looking at pics of augmented breasts in his kitchen while he prepares a dinner party for a group of old friends. His wife Marie (Bérénice Bejo) enters, complaining that she’s again fighting with their teenage daughter Margot (Fleur Fitoussi). Vincent tells her that maybe instead of analyzing her like the shrink she is, she should be a supportive mother instead.

The way the guests are connected are via the men, all of whom went to grade school together. Marco (Roschdy Zem) and Charlotte (Suzanne Clément), who are having tension in their 15-year marriage; newlyweds Thomas (Vincent Elbaz) and Léa (Doria Tiller); and Ben ( Grégory Gadebois), a divorced and recently-unemployed gym teacher who was supposed to bring the person he was dating but came solo due to what he claims was his date’s stomach flu.

After a discussion about who locks their smartphones and who doesn’t; Marie has an idea for a game: Everyone puts their phone in the center of the table, and for the entire night, everyone’s texts, e-mails, social media notifications, and phone calls will be public to the entire group. Mostly everyone agrees, thinking they have nothing to hide. Marco is reluctant, as is Vincent, but they relent. As the evening proceeds and the eclipse gets closer to being complete, phones go off, truths are revealed, feelings are hurt, and people find things out about their old friends that they never knew before.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There are tons of dinner party movies, but movies where a group of friends start in a happy, festive situation before secrets are revealed is more relevant. Think of it as a lighter version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Performance Worth Watching: Bejo shines as Marie, who is befuddled why she can’t communicate with her daughter, bemused at the news that Vincent is going into therapy, defensive when the friends find out why she’s going in for voluntary surgery, and sad when Magot calls her father with an important question.

Memorable Dialogue: During that call from Margot, Vincent tells Margot as the table listens, “If it was just for me, I’d say don’t do it, don’t ever do it. Stay my little girl forever. But that’s impossible.”

Single Best Shot: This shot is the best indication that everything has gone to hell — and it wasn’t because of the foie gras in milk Vincent made as the main dish.

Sex and Skin: Despite all the innuendo, and even overt sexual advances (the funniest moment of the film involves a loaded text coming just as Ben tries to take a selfie of the group with the eclipse in the background), this is a pretty chaste movie.

Our Take: The original title of Nothing To Hide, from director Fred Cavayé, is Le Jeu, which is French for “the game,” or more accurately, “the mind game.” And that’s a much more appropriate title than the Americanized one. This is the film equivalent of a TV “bottle episode,” shot mostly in Vincent and Marie’s spacious flat. The set is not claustrophobic, per se, but you can feel the walls closing in on everyone as their secrets are revealed by their texts, calls, and messages.

And while the funny parts aren’t necessarily laugh-out-loud funny, there are some gags that work, like Léa and Thomas constantly shaking the wine they brought under the impression it needs to have the gas released to taste better. Where most of the funny stuff comes from is the easy chemistry among the group, including the casual insults that childhood friends always give each other whether the target of those insults are hurt by them or not.

When things go wrong, though, the movie gets a lot better. Most of the gags stop and the drama begins, bringing out the true characters of these people who until that point weren’t particularly deep. Some of the revelations work out better than others, especially when Marco persuades Ben to trade phones so Charlotte doesn’t catch an associate’s risque text to him. But it comes back to bite him when he digs in and creates a scenario around what is happening on Ben’s phone, all in the name of calling out Charlotte’s dissatisfaction with their marriage.

And the ending, while making sense because of when the story takes place, leaves us cold. We’re left not knowing whether the game actually happened, even though the truths that were revealed still existed.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Nothing To Hide has good performances, an appealing cast and a good balance of funny, touching and dramatic moments. Watch it before you decide to have a dinner party, even if it’s just so you don’t make foie gras in milk.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch Nothing To Hide on Netflix