By Any Means Necessary

 

SLALOM (B) - This French production avoids the trap of presenting another repulsive take on the stale narrative of an older man exploiting a younger woman, or in this case, a skiing coach abusing his 15-year-old student. It's a scenario we don't need to seek out.

However, this debut feature from writer-director Charlene Favier pulses with dread and sadness, as young doe-eyed Lyz (Noee Abita) has been cast adrift by distracted divorced parents, and coach Fred (Jeremie Renier from Francois Ozon's "Double Lover") fills the void. A nuanced character, he comes across as someone with more of an uncontrollable compulsion than just some evil predator. Still, a rape scene two-thirds of the way through is shocking and disturbing; yet, Favier trains her camera on Lyz's face, those frightened eyes searching not so much for rescue but for a way to instantly process the attack and find a drawer in her mind to instantly shelve it away in her psyche.

Abita is fascinating to watch. She just turned 22, but she looks like an awkward teenager, with small hands but full lips, as if she's still growing into her body, which gets inspected and measured regularly to assess her progress as an athlete. But it is her eyes that constantly scan her surroundings (mostly teen social and competitive dynamics at the remote school in the mountains) and assess situations for survival options, whether Fred is stalking her or her best friend in the group, Justine (Maira Schmitt), gets a little too chummy.

Favier hints at the idea that Fred is just working every angle he can in order to motivate this future champion to maximize her talents. (He often uses "we" to describe Lyz's athletic accomplishments.) The filmmaker refuses to outright demonize Fred but rather provides just a few shades of grey to keep the viewer off balance.

Favier shows a strong visual flair in this resort setting (she is particularly adept at capturing the flurry of snowflakes, whether natural or machine-produced), but she lapses into conventional choices; there must be at least a dozen establishing shots of the snow-covered mountains, a technique intended to perhaps suggest emotional impediments involved here, but which eventually comes off as repetitive, if not nearly Pythonesque ("forbidding, aloof, terrifying ..."). And Lyz's ascent -- from budding phenom to world's greatest skier -- is a little too shorthand to be fully believable.

But this is Abita's movie, and Favier, like Celine Sciamma ("Girlhood"), has a distinctive connection with the adolescent experience, which allows her young actress to add layers and subtlety to what otherwise could have been a shallow, exploitive movie.