Force Majeure [Turist] **** (2014, Johannes Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli) – Movie Review

Writer-director Ruben Östlund’s storming black comedy drama dissects a happy, well-to-do Scandinavian family on a skiing holiday in the French Alps who find themselves staring at an avalanche coming towards them during lunch on their resort’s idyllic terrace on the second day. Not a good holiday development.

But nice, handsome dad Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) says not to worry, it’s a controlled event and the resort knows what it’s doing. But the avalanche keeps coming and then the lunchers are suddenly covered in snow and everyone panics.

When the white snow spray cloud lifts, everyone’s ok, and they resume their tables, but dad has panicked and run for his life, abandoning his wife and family.

In the aftermath of the avalanche, the family’s dynamic is shaken to the core, with a big fat question mark hanging over the dad, who won’t admit he did anything wrong. Now his wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) despises him and his kids show they feel abandoned. Ebba just won’t let it go.

This two-hour moral debate and discussion of male turpitude and destroyed masculinity plays like an edge-of-seat thriller, with a Hitchcock dark edge of humour. It’s a brilliant movie, very funny, quite electrifying and with the power to shake you. Östlund’s writing and direction are perfect, and so are the performances. It’s really well shot, with a brilliant avalanche. It couldn’t be better. Penetrating and cutting deep, it’s quite an eye-opener.

The odd thing is that the dad, who is shamed as ‘the villain’, soon becomes increasingly sympathetic as he gets more and more bewildered, while ‘the victims’, the wife and kids, become more and more strident and annoying as they get more and more hurt and frustrated.

Force Majeure doesn’t so much look up at the mountains as stare into the abyss.

Swedish director Östlund followed it with the Cannes Palme d’Or winner The Square (2017).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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