Jessica Kiang of Variety called it "Well-made, perceptively performed and deeply enraging, it's a difficult but necessary watch". Tomris Laffly of RogerEbert.com wrote, "Delivering an unforgettable breakthrough performance, Abita is phenomenal in pitching Lyz on the slippery slope between an adult wannabe and a little kid, boldly wearing even the smallest nuances of her character's rapidly shifting emotional world on her resolute face". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote, "The grey area between passionately committed teaching and abuse is a familiar topic. Yet the film ingeniously merges it with the ambiguous experience of slalom ski-ing: exhilarating and euphoric, but also dangerous and even an emotional death-wish, surrendering to the downhill rush". Bilge Ebiri, reviewing the film for Vulture, wrote, "The film is too rich and too human for any kind of categorization. But for all its beauty, it's also quite an unsettling watch - a delicate, authentic look at the complicated ways in which abuse works".
