Directed by:
Ruben ÖstlundScreenplay:
Ruben ÖstlundCinematography:
Fredrik WenzelComposer:
Ola FløttumCast:
Johannes Bah Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Clara Wettergren, Vincent Wettergren, Kristofer Hivju, Fanni Metelius, Karin Myrenberg Faber, Brady Corbet (more)Plots(1)
A Swedish family travels to the French Alps to enjoy a few days of skiing and spend some precious time with each other. The sun is shining and the slopes are spectacular but, during a lunch at a mountainside restaurant, an avalanche turns everything upside down. With diners fleeing in all directions, mother Ebba calls for her husband Tomas as she tries to protect their children. Tomas, meanwhile, is running for his life... Reality returns to embarrassed laughter, the anticipated disaster having failed to occur, and yet the family's world has been shaken to its core. Tomas' unexpected action leads them to evaluate their roles and assumptions, a question mark hanging over their father in particular. With the end of the holiday approaching, Tomas and Ebba's marriage hangs in the balance as Tomas struggles desperately to reclaim his role as family patriarch. FORCE MAJEURE is an observational comedy about the role of the male in modern family life. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Videos (8)
Reviews (8)
Personally, I was disappointed. I have no idea why comedy was listed as one of the genres. The film would work for me as a drama if it was an hour shorter. I felt snowed under with shots of snow-covered Alps, snow-covered forests and snow-covered roofs. All those close-ups of steel wire ropes made me feel like I was supposed to inspect the safety of the cable car. Either the running time should have been shorter or the story should have been more engaging.
()
The Scandinavian festival in Mladá Boleslav prepared a real gem for me for one Wednesday evening. The director Ruben Östlund has already convinced me once with the film Play that he can be original and the Force Majeure seemed at least as interesting. The result exceeded all expectations. This is an absolutely precise decomposition of the man/woman relationship and parents/children relationships in one not entirely pleasant situation. It made me sick for a while, but the director softened everything with a lot of good and funny scenes. The actors were also good, and if only the final scene of the dad having a psychotic episode had been a little better, I would’ve been absolutely satisfied. Seen based on the Challenge Tour 2015.
()
The archetype of the Nordic family drama you can simply count on. This time it's the man's position in society that takes the heat and, more importantly, the expectations and ideas of what a man like that should be. Tomas is the first to take a powder before the seeming avalanche, not forgetting to take his mobile phone with him from the table, then he does not publicly declare this act and still tries to gain the higher ground over his wife on the topic. The family peace is not particularly helped by the arrival of Tomas's newly divorced friend with his twenty-year-old trophy and the overgrown charisma of a guy who can afford not to care about anything. The only time Tomas manages to somehow exalt his manhood is at an incredible atavistic party, where sweaty half-naked men pour beers and vomit all over each other, with strobe lights flashing and techno blaring. The problem with the given situation is also the setting, where the luxurious mountain resort may offer plenty of opportunities for recreation, fun, and relaxation, but in the long static shots we gradually realize that none of the characters belong there, that they have no corner or place to release. Compared to the occasional hysteria on IMDB, where guys are afraid of their nature and hide behind lines like "this is male-bashing feminist bs", I see this as a rather optimistic and credible probe for reflection, which basically says "family will castrate you, but you need to get over it and kind of just deal".
()
Paradies: Schnee. An intense relationship avalanche that rolls around the peaks of Bergman, Trier, Seidl and Andersson and ends (typically for Östlund) with a large and seemingly superfluous thesis, which even in film form presents the role of hypocrisy and falsehood in the construction of reality. While I consider the first 2/3 of the film to be absolutely brilliant in observing details and working with a change of mood, the conclusion, as in the case of Play, feels like an intellectual construct without debates from an extremely clever creator. There are several places where Ruben could cut off the film as a chilling image of intimate collapse and uncertainty, but he prefers to go with the enigmatic metaphor of the collective. Force Majeure is the type of film that can shake confidence in love relationships and accurately capture the fragility and degree of manipulation with which we keep them going. It is also the exact naming of the thin crust under which the distinguished Nordic society locked instincts, which then wants to be heard, with surprising intensity, in an environment full of bizarre human rituals (in this aspect, Force Majeure reminds of Seidl's trilogy Paradise). Confirmation that Östlund belongs to the top echelons of art film. Maybe he just didn't have to emphasize it so much. [80%]
()
When a man falls out of his role... As with an avalanche, even an imperceptible stimulus is enough to trigger a relationship crisis. One selfish act of self-preservation leads to further transgressions and misconduct. Instead of falsely cheerful vacation pictures (the film begins with the staging of one such photograph), we watch the chronicle of a breakup. The demoralising atmosphere of mutual mistrust also sucks in the loved ones of the conflicting parties. This avalanche may not kill anyone, but it won’t make them stronger either. The mountain scenery provides a benchmark for assessing the severity of the problems that the characters face. The setting, the unsettling musical motif and many of the situations depicted (disappearing into the fog, the incompetent bus driver) promise great tragedy, which is the perspective that corresponds to how the head of the family wants to see his failure. What actually unfolds on the screen, however, is an intimate family drama. The voyeuristic, predominantly static camera, which as a matter of principle does not assume the point of view of the characters, does not explicitly lead us to a clear interpretation, but the shot compositions make it clear that the weak link here is not the woman who is being pushed out of the picture, but rather the man who doubts his own masculinity to such an extent that he has to ostentatiously convince himself (through a drinking session with the parameters of a pre-civilisation male ritual) and those around him of it: the attempt at intimacy with his wife, reflected in a mirror, has the same vague contours as Tomas’s status as head of the family. The devastation is accelerated by the fact that both partners desperately lack a sense of detachment, unlike the director, who enjoys demolishing the tense atmosphere of Bergman-esque psychological drama with incursions from worlds that are different in terms of genre (the attack of a child’s drone, the sticker on the door). Thanks to the unwillingness to compromise or to in any way make the characters’ situation easier for them, Force Majeure is an invaluable training video for similarly “calamitous” situations in your own relationship. 80%
()
Ads