Critics reviews

[The film's] foreseeable nature makes it neither unimportant nor hollow. On the contrary—by telling a story we’ve all heard a million times before (and perhaps even experienced first-hand to some degree) plainly and bravely, Charlène Favier reaches something urgent and devastating.

The film is too rich and too human for any kind of categorization. But for all its beauty, it’s also quite an unsettling watch — a delicate, authentic look at the complicated ways in which abuse works... [It] is a mesmerizing movie. Its surfaces are often lovely, even as the story it tells becomes more and more horrific.

Favier keeps a laser focus on Lyz’s subjective experience, with a frank and unflinching eye on the moments both euphoric and gut-wrenching... [She] carefully dissects the complex power dynamics at play, as well as the emotional devastation that results from the abuse. It’s an honest, and surprisingly, even hopeful portrait.

Far from a one-note #MeToo message movie, "Slalom" brings a poignant sense of restraint with fleshed-out characters for a thoroughly unnerving experience.

Sensitive [and] discomforting... Favier had previous experience as a competitive skier, and she is attentive to the textures of mountainside sports and how abuse plays out in this setting.

Shot in anamorphic widescreen, the film reflects the grandiosity of Lyz’s milieu while also emphasizing her smallness within it; it’s less a story about climbing to new peaks of achievement, which comes rather naturally for Lyz given her preternatural ability, than about the hazards that exist regardless of however many summits are scaled.

While Favier avoids skiing down all the predictable slopes and maintains a narrative poise, which surprises considering the subject matter, these are indeed chilly scenes of a winter oft repeated and normalized across every culture and climate.

[A] tense, bone-chilling first feature... Favier is smart on the mechanics of abuse, and the sobering inevitability of her heroine’s downhill skid.

Directed with both sensitivity and brio, this gripping and haunting drama gets to the heart of the power that abusers hold over their victims... In seeking to understand both abuser and abused, Slalom offers a truly nuanced picture of abuse without sacrificing indictment.

Rather as Céline Sciamma did in "Girlhood" (2014), Favier celebrates the resilience that allows young women to rewrite their narrative after life’s darkest chapters.

Favier’s script, co-written with Antoine Lacomblez and Marie Talon, is as chilly as the permacold of its surroundings... It’s effective drama but extremely difficult viewing, especially for viewers in a country that has been rocked by decades of sexual abuse scandals.

It wouldn't surprise me if some viewers were frustrated or appalled by Favier's refusal to carve clear-cut lines in the snow, as I'm sure some readers were upon the publication of Nabokov's most notorious novel... This is not a film that intends to do your daily step count for you - indeed, there are sequences that will make you want to curl up in a ball. But - boy - is your moral compass in for a workout.