In flip-flops at the foot of the Himalayas: between laughter and tears (review)

Audrey Lamy impresses as the mother of a child with autism in a film that never sacrifices the ease of emotional blackmail.

The title is definitely intriguing. But he nevertheless perfectly describes the situation experienced by his heroine: the mother of a child suffering from an autistic disorder (Eden Lopes, astonishing), lost, helpless, with a certain tendency to drown her worries in alcohol time to reach forty when, separating from her partner and without a fixed income, she will have to learn to live alone while teaching her child independence.

At the helm of this film, we find someone we didn’t expect in this emotional register: John Wax, the co-director of Simply black with Jean-Pascal Zadi. But, friends with Marie-Odile Weiss, whose In flip-flops at the foot of the Himalayas is inspired both by life and by the only stage that it had drawn from it, he wanted to bring to the big screen this story of a reconstruction populated by obstacles that are a priori insurmountable. It puts an end to the classic “film about the subject” with this bias of slipping humor into necessarily poignant situations without it ever seeming artificial.

Thanks to the quality of the writing obviously (in which Marie-Odile Weiss participated) but also to the relevance of the choice of its main performer. We have known her only on stage since Latest before Vegas the comic talent of Audrey Lamy. We had too few opportunities (Polish, The Invisibles, The Brigade…) to admire her ease in climbing more dramatic slopes as she does here with a fluidity, an accuracy, an amplitude which takes the film to new heights.

Of John Wax. With Audrey Lamy, Eden Lopes, Benjamin Tranié… Duration 1h32. Released November 13, 2024