Subtitles:

English (burned-in for non-English dialogue)

Extras:

The term force majeure refers to a chance occurrence that can change everything. It is a clause that is put into contracts that frees both parties of responsibility, an unavoidable accident, or, quite simply an act of God. In a remote ski resort full of rich tourists in the French Alps, an unsuspecting Swedish family is about to come up against such an event. While sitting at lunch one day, they notice an avalanche beginning to roll down the side of a nearby mountain. Responding with his first instinct, Tomas, the father of the group, flees the table, leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves. After assessing that no bodily damage has been done, the family tries to go on enjoying their holiday, but it is not long before they are having awkward dinner conversations with strangers and strained interactions about the way they separately perceive how events played out. Coupling intelligence with aesthetics, director Ruben Östlund presents a biting satire of masculinity. Peppered with surrealist sequences, the atmospheric film uses the imposing landscape to build images of a white abyss that one can lose themself in while the blasting Vivaldi score is reminiscent of the most powerful sequences in films like Lars von Trier's Melancholia. While not strictly a genre movie, Force Majeure deals with something much more real and horrifying. Östlund, who has made a career for himself out of cinematic morality tales, applies his scathing wit to these scenarios and creates a kind of psychological nightmare for his characters, one in which the humor and pain of their world's unraveling is so palpable that it is cringe inducing to watch, but the results are far too relatable to look away.

For a fleeting moment, one could reasonably mistake Force Majeure for a disaster movie. Certainly, its characters might wonder, through their panic and fear, if they’ve somehow stumbled into one. The pivotal scene arrives early, on the second day of a blissful family vacation. Seated for a relaxing lunch on the terrace of a French ski resort, married Swedish parents Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) are alarmed by the rapid approach of snow, tumbling down the adjacent slope in their general direction. As the wall of white seems to close in on them, expanding outward with menacing speed, Thomas makes an instinctual flee for safety, completely abandoning Ebba and their two young children. The avalanche, as it turns out, is controlled; what looks like certain doom is just a false alarm, a dramatic billow of powder. But as the smoke clears, so too does any illusion Ebba might have held about Tomas and his paternal instincts. There’s no going back from such a flagrant act of self-preservation, however involuntary it might have been.

Gary Tooze

June 22nd, 2015

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