Simply A Masterpiece

One of my all time favorites.

Charming and brutal

Amateur movie with Big budget

I'm not saying don't watch it, just be ready to experience the awkwardness and a lot of hysterical shouting throughout. And don't expect a high octane disaster like the title and pictures suggest. The whole thing is uncomfortable and awkward for two hours. There are also lots of random and unexplained events, but they were just playing out what happens on normal family holiday with no explanation or lead-up. It didn't help that I couldn't stand most of the cast of the film. I don't know if this was the intention when they made it or if it's just me!

Force Majeure is a stunning 2014 drama by Swedish director Ruben Östlund (who did Involuntary and more recently the Academy Award nominated The Square) about a family of four spending a vacation at a resort in the French Alps. The husband Tomas, his wife Ebba, and their young son and daughter are, in the first day-and-a-half or so of the trip, by all appearances quite happy and having a good time in their stay, skiing down the beautiful slopes, having their pictures taken, laughing and so on. Then suddenly something changes everything: an avalanche, done through a controlled ignition, that strays further than intended towards where the four eating, and causes quite a fright among the diners, though as it turns out no one was ever put in any mortal risk. Ebba stays by her kids, while Tomas reacts I think the way many would in the heat of the moment. The next three-and-a-half days of the five day trip--the movie is segmented by day with pretty night ski-slope montages in between--will show the ramifications of that reaction in vivid, often times uncomfortable, detail. The two lead performances by Lisa Loven Kongsli and Johannes Bah Kuhnke are terrific; they truly inhibit this couple, as their at least outwardly strong marriage and family starts to unravel. At first it seems what transpired might not be that big of a deal, but it's there simmering underneath, and decisions by both in how they handle make it progressively more toxic. Nothing seems deliberately exaggerated, even what might be considered the film's climax: a huge turn quite hard-to-watch turn when Ebba and Tomas are with a few friends in their hotel room. There are other people who come into the scene--friends, casual acquaintances, and one particular stranger--who observe the couple in their conflict, viewing them almost as we the viewers of the movie do; or viewing them while apart from one another, as the two are in much of the movie's second act. The actors playing the daughter and son do good job, and though the film clearly isn't as much about them it's interesting to see how they react to their parents' escalations. The film ends (don't worry, no spoilers here) with a fascinating sequence. For what the filmmakers tried to do, it could have so easily looked clumsy, forced, or like a cliché. But it's pulled off spectacularly: a revelation which wraps the story up in a striking, arguably brilliant fashion. Few films, in my opinion, have such a near-perfect conclusion as this one, and the journey taking us to that point is never showy and frequently powerful. No one, I believe, can watch this film and help but think "How would I really react?" But this film is about much more than that, strewn with themes like marriage, gender roles in a family, masculinity and others that are analyzed in poignant and perceptive ways. The way characters outside the two main are utilized is also something to behold. Definitely see this movie.

This film was highly praised in (Belgian) newspapers for its ice cold depiction of a marriage being swallowed up by an avalanche, so to say. My eagerness to watch it was set in motion!. When watching it, I must say I can't remember getting so agitated so very quickly from watching a film. What started out with such potential quite rapidly unravelled into a combination of irritatingly one-dimensional charachters, an almost cartoonish portrayal of events and numerous pointless scenes. Scandinavian film making unworthy, truly!

Wounded machismo and domestic disintegration are the order of the day in Swedish director Ruben Ostlund's comedy drama Force Majeure. Holidaying together at a fancy ski resort in the French Alps, the family at the centre of the story are presented as the pinnacle of bliss and success. Mum Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and Dad Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and both good-looking and financially comfortable, and along with their children Vera (Clara Wettergren) and Harry (Vincent Wettergren), make for a Kodak-cute unit, highlighted in the opening scene where they are badgered into posing for a few snaps by a tourist photographer. Tomas is taking a break from his busy work- life, and Ebba is happy to have her husband by her side for a week. As they ski, nap and dine together, frequent explosions - creating 'controlled avalanches' - boom in the distance, suggesting that something troubling is looming.On their second day. the family relax in a cafe when an avalanche starts to rush in the distance. What begins as curiosity and excitement soon turns to terror as it appears that the giant wall of snow is heading straight for them. They are engulfed in mist, but are relieved to discover that the avalanche came to a halt some way off. As the fog clears, Ebba still embraces her children, while Tomas is nowhere to be seen, although he has remembered to save his iPhone. It would seem that the husband and father isn't quite the man they thought he was, and this sets off an incredibly uncomfortable yet shrewdly funny breakdown of the photogenic unit over an increasingly long week away. At first, Tomas refuses to admit any wrongdoing, but is pecked away at by his wife and eventually confronted in two particularly uncomfortable scenes over dinner and drinks. Even his buddy Mats (Game of Thrones' Kristofer Hivju) struggles to defend his cowardly actions.Shot with a Michael Haneke-esque eye for emotional violence and domestic unravelling, Force Majeure is often far more awkward than the work of Ricky Gervais, thanks to Ostlund's ear for witty, realistic dialogue and some committed performances from the leads. Tomas' fall from hard-working patriarch to emasculated cry-baby is both brutal and utterly hilarious. Ostlund clearly doesn't like the privileged bourgeois, and has fun picking them apart. The most wince-inducing scenes are somewhat relieved by the comedic timing of Hivju, who inspires humour by merely reacting to the horror playing out in front of him, siding with his friend as his much-younger girlfriend Fanni (Fanni Metelius) comforts Ebba. The gender divide is drawn in the snow, and thanks for a conversation between Mats and Fanni where the latter throws hypotheticals at her recently-divorced fella, this is perhaps the worst film in the history of film to watch with your partner. While it could have benefited from a running-time trim, Force Majeure leaves you with the disturbing idea that you may never truly know the people closest to you.