Cannes, special correspondent
Nothing in particular, no harbinger announcing this irreversible decision to leave the world below to settle up there, up there. Pierre dumps everything, overnight, a comfortable professional situation, a life that is just as comfortable. His burn-out is an awareness, a questioning of our modern lives where everything goes fast, very fast, where everything is caught and thrown. Up there, curled up in his sleeping bag, under a tent as light as it is resistant, Pierre, his ears alert, listens to the wind blowing, howling, whistling, hitting the canvas of his shelter. Every day, he will equip himself, harness himself to venture into this sea of ice which is constantly melting visibly and which is collapsing in places causing impressive stone avalanches. This is where Pierre will meet strange creatures, kinds of giant fireflies that will guide him into the bowels of the earth…
Past the first scenes of exposure, as banal as the life of Pierre, we understand that what attracts our man is much bigger than him, than us. This force of attraction reversed towards the summits, Thomas Salvador will film it, step by step, in the snow, in the middle of a deafening silence and a blinding light. It is not Peter who will tame the mountain but the mountain that will tame him and grip him in its crevices. How can you resist the beauty of these landscapes? How not to want to preserve what the modern world strives to destroy, insidiously? The director manages to find the right balance, distilling, in what could have been a classic mountain film, hints of the fantastic (with rather kitsch but tasty artisanal effects) which give an existential dimension to the film. The terrestrial and almost enigmatic presence of Louise Bourgoin is part of this beautiful mountain getaway.
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