Slalom

Slalom (2020) is set at an elite ski academy in the French Alps and it is not a sports film. Lyz is fifteen and has just been accepted into a selective club. Her coach Fred sees her potential and starts investing in her. That attention gradually becomes something else. The film shows the shift in small steps rather than a single scene, and that is exactly what makes it hard to watch. Director Charlène Favier drew on her own experience. The most careful thing the film does is refuse to make anyone a monster. What Fred does is a crime and the film never softens that, but it also shows how the structure around them, the targets, the isolation, the parents who are not there, prepares the ground. Noée Abita carries almost all of it with very little dialogue. The snow is beautiful and cold, which makes the discomfort worse rather than better. Good for: French cinema, realistic coming of age drama, and anyone interested in the darker side of elite sport. Who should be careful: the sexual abuse of a minor is the centre of the film. Nothing is graphic, but the subject is unrelenting and may be difficult for anyone close to it.