Analysis of Louis’ Shoes

Louis’ Shoes (2020) is a French animated short film about a young autistic boy named Louis, who arrives at a new school and tells his classmates about his bad experience at his previous school.

What is Louis’ Shoes about?
The setting takes place in two classrooms and a playground. The characters that appear in the film are Louis, his parents, other pupils and his teachers.

Louis tells his new classmates about how the teachers in his previous school did not understand him, and how he was bullied by the children there.

In Louis’ story, he explains that his teacher did not understand how his brain works and prevented him from explaining to his old classmates, one of whom stole his shoes. Louis’ shoes are very important to him, as they make him feel comfortable when wearing them. He does not like touching the ground with his feet if he is not wearing his shoes.

Louis says that his parents confronted the teacher about the whereabouts of his missing shoes, and his bad time at the old school is why he is enrolling in the new one. He looks up at his smiling teacher, while the new classmates take their shoes off in solidarity.

The main themes in Louis’ Shoes are learning to listen and understand people better, bullying, and moving on.

Realist elements:
Classrooms.
Louis explaining his previous school experience.
Louis’ old teacher and classmates not understanding his autism.
Playground.
The children hitting Louis with a football and stealing his shoes.
Louis’ parents confronting his teacher about his missing shoes.

Formalist elements:
Low angle shot of Louis and only the new classmates’ bodies.
Louis’ Mind Palace (fantasy).
Point-of-view shots with Louis not looking into other people’s faces.
Cold, uncomfortable, muted colours for Louis’ nasty teacher, and warm, brightening colours for Louis’ nice teacher and new classmates.
Louis’ love of simplicity and order (fantasy).
Low angle shot of the playground.
Dramatic lighting with tree shadows before Louis’ shoes are stolen.
Changing music to fit with emotion.

Perspective:
The film uses a lot of subjective perspective shots and details, such as the blurred details and backgrounds behind Louis, and the dramatic lighting and close-up shots of his face with a shallow depth of field, representing his isolation. It also lacks an objective perspective because it is being told from Louis’ point of view.

Colours:
Louis’ new school has a warm, bright, welcoming temperature and palette consisting of yellows, blues, oranges and browns. This tells the audience that he is moving on to a new chapter in his life to make new friends, making them feel happy for him. 

Louis’ old school has a cold, dark, uncomfortable, muted temperature and palette consisting of blues, whites, greys, reds and blacks. This tells the audience that he did not enjoy his time there and felt isolated, making them feel sorry for him and concerned about his well-being.

Lighting:
Louis’ new school has high key lighting, lighter shadows and less contrast to fit with its welcoming, sympathetic tone. His old school has low key lighting, heavier shadows and more contrast to fit with its dark, sombre, misunderstanding tone. In the scene below, a warmer light is shone on Louis’ face as he ignores the cold, bluish-white lighting surrounding his body from his old school. Another scene shows Louis in the warm, bright, tree-silhouetted light from outside his classroom’s dark colours, representing his calm before he finds that his shoes are missing.

Camera movements:
When Louis introduces himself to his new classmates, the camera zooms slowly out to convey his loneliness and nervousness. Throughout the film, there are static cutaway and point-of-view shots that take the audience into Louis’ world. When he feels anxious about his stolen shoes and falls down to his Mind Palace, we get a point-of-view shot with camera movements, and there is another one at the end with his new teacher, which opens up his claustrophobic world a bit more.

Editing:
At the beginning of the film, cutaway, wide and point-of-view shots are used at a faster pace to show Louis’ disorientation and recollection of his memories at the old school, notably when he is taking off his shoes, looking at his new classmates’ shoes, and struggling to look directly at one of his old classmates.

Sounds:
On the title card, we hear children putting their belongings away and sitting at their desks and a school bell ringing, indicating that the film begins there and Louis has arrived at his new school. From Louis’ perspective, we also hear whispering and mumbling between his new classmates in the ambience of the classroom, and loud noises when Louis takes off his shoes and the classmates are moving and tapping theirs. When Louis is anxious about looking at the old classmate’s face, a faint heartbeat and slightly loud fabric sounds are used.
This sonic landscape created by the filmmakers exaggerates the sounds to represent Louis’ state of mind, using reverbs and increased volumes of foley sound effects. An example being when one of Louis’ old classmates runs past the screen and their football hits him on the head.

Perspective:
In a point-of-view shot from Louis’ perspective, his new teacher is shown smiling at him and the audience, breaking the fourth wall and indicating that the film is about wanting recognition, sympathy and understanding. The film ends with a close-up shot of Louis smiling at his new classmates, another instance of breaking the fourth wall.

Who made the film?:
Louis’ Shoes is an animated short film by director-screenwriter-technical artist Marion Philippe and Kayu Leung. It was also animated and edited by Théo Jamin and Jean-Géraud Blanc; produced by Anne Brotot, and composed by Lolita Del Pino.[1]

Why and how did they make the film?:
As parents, Philippe, Leung, Jamin and Blanc did a lot of research for the film to understand Louis, and ensure that he feels good about himself. They watched interviews with autistic philosophers and met people who were concerned to try to see the world from Louis’ perspective. Thinking that it would be amazing if others could step into Louis’ shoes and question the world, they decided to make a film about him. They also decided to let the character tell them what he experiences on a daily basis.[1]
Louis is a shy character, so the filmmakers asked Ronan Guilloux to provide his voice, giving Louis his own mature vocabulary, and themselves a window into his thoughts. Very often, they realised the paradox between what Louis sees and what he thinks.[1]
Louis gives his new classmates a structural and self-aware narration of his previous time at the old school. The filmmakers had to develop a visual grammar specially designed for him, as well as a further commentary for how humans behave in general. By doing this they integrated the theme of empathy into the composition of every frame, with a setup at the beginning and a payoff at the end.[1]
Setups include Louis not looking directly at his new classmates, and only their shoes being shown instead in surreal framing; the environments being oddly massive to Louis due to living in a social structure that is so much bigger than him and others; and almost every shot opening with Louis’ shoes, which help navigate his life. Payoffs include the scene cutting to the centre of Louis’ face and him looking at his new, smiling teacher (the human face and empathy is the centrepiece) and the scene with Louis’ parents confronting the teacher not opening with his shoes.[1]
Philippe, Leung, Jamin and Blanc did not want to portray Louis realistically because they wanted his story to be for everyone and for anyone to empathise with him. This is why he was given a stop motion doll-like look. The appearance reminded the filmmakers of their childhood. They also gave Louis his shoes, an integral part of the character and one of the film’s most important themes, and coloured them blue and added a cube logo. Blue is the symbolic colour of autism, and Louis likes square things. They also created a blue school bag for the boy, representing his structured personality and perspective, and the teacher at his new school, the only character that Louis looks at directly. The characters are distinguished by their different footwear (shoes, boots, high heels, et cetera), which was done to visually convey their personality through their feet, and allow them to be identified by Louis from his perspective.[1]
The filmmakers considered bringing Louis to life to be challenging. They recorded footage of Leung to use as reference for the character’s subtle, calculated movements and gestures when he is in control of them. The only exception is when he falls down to his Mind Palace after his shoes are stolen. Louis’ eyes also lack irises or pupils, so they animated the reflections in his eyes to indicate which direction that he is looking in. They also had to set up and animate the many elements and props in the constellation and Mind Palace scenes, which represent Louis’ thoughts. To save time on the repetitive task, they developed some tools to automate the rigging of all the props. Through that process, they were animating Louis’ mind.[1]
Since Louis does not move from his stool because of his attachment to his shoes, the filmmakers made their effort to go inside the character’s head by creating his own sensory environment. The lighting, colours and sounds are made from Louis’ senses, no matter what emotional stage he is in, imaginative or realistic. From the set pieces to the props, they wanted to make a school conceived by the mind of a child, naive and palpable just like a miniature toy in a doll house. Each set in the abstract constellations scene is made by the elements previously seen in Louis’ memory, to show how he reconstructs and reinterprets his daily life.[1]
Louis sees the world as sort of a social theatre, so the filmmakers used a directional stage light to light up his doll’s house. In the abstract dark shoe tunnel scene, all the lights do not link to any realistic factor, because we see what Louis sees, from environmental light to spotlight. The filmmakers’ research actually helped them a lot in their aesthetic choices; the sensitivity of light plays a large role when Louis finds that his shoes have been stolen.[1]
With their research on neurodiversity, Philippe, Leung, Jamin and Blanc used sound design to construct Louis’ sensory environment and allow the audience to see things more closely from his perspective, as they can hear the world as he does. Sound is so important in the film, because Louis is hypersensitive, and the slightest sounds that he hears are amplified. The filmmakers chose a form of music (composed by Lolita Del Pino) at the limit of sound design. For example, when Louis loses his shoes, he feels an intense emotion, but says nothing and remains frozen in place. His parents are the only ones that are angry about his shoes’ disappearance. When the audience sees things from inside Louis’ head, the sound becomes a cacophony of emotions.[1]
The filmmakers did not want to tell a Manichean story that was dualistic or simplistic, since Louis does not show resentment towards the classmates who stole his shoes. The pain that he feels is about not having his shoes on, basically the loss of his anchor to the world. His main enemy is his own reality. Telling Louis’ story was also a way for the filmmakers to tell the audience about something close to their hearts. To quote Louis himself, ‘It doesn’t matter who you are, the most important thing is that you’re comfortable in your own shoes.’[1]

Genres:
The genres used in Louis’ Shoes are realist-fiction (Louis telling his new classmates about his old school) and fantasy (representations of Louis’ sensory environment). The film is also influenced by docufiction films in order to create an educational piece.

Influences/References:
The film has parallels between Alice in Wonderland and Coraline, in the sense that we see Louis in his fantasy worlds (the Mind Palace, the constellations and the dark shoe tunnel that he falls down). The Mind Palace and constellations are an alternative reality for Louis to escape to, much like the Other World in Coraline, where the titular character goes to escape her boredom in the real world. The scene where he falls down to the Mind Palace is pretty similar to Alice falling down the rabbit hole.