A mother films her daughter – the tenderness of banality, the banality of tenderness. A mother revisits images of her daughter as she fiercely searches for the moment when her difference became visible to everyone, and thus painfully indisputable. Even so, Claire Doyon’s film is the story of a contestation which fluctuates in intensity, as well as in regards to its object: first of all a contestation of Pénélope’s autism, a contestation of the incurability of the disorder, and, finally, a contestation of her own discouragement, of her own resignation. In parallel with this self-analysis vibrating with barely contained emotions, the images of Pénélope pass before our eyes and create a portrait in absentia: even though she is present in virtually every shot, she remains utterly opaque, as she seems to defy any interpretation, including those advanced by her own mother from off screen. The only certainties remain her moments of joy, whether shared or solitary: Pénélope running wildly on the beach with her mother, Pénélope plunging her hands deep into the wet soil. These images are proof of an atypical, yet intense life, and they are as similar to as they are different from any other family footage; and Doyon juggles between the personal and the universal with remarkable emotional intelligence in order to fight against the narrow, prescriptive notion of “normality.” (Liri Alienor Chapelan)