Force Majeure

Director: Ruben Östlund

2014 / 120min / DCP

We’ve only just gotten to know the central characters of Force Majeure, a middle-class Scandinavian married couple and their two young children on vacation in the Alps, when a sudden avalanche interrupts their holiday, seemingly about to bury the balcony of the ski lodge where they’re staying. No one is physically harmed by the snowslide, but the real subject of Östlund’s major breakout film is the emotional fallout that follows in its aftermath. Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) instinctively chooses self-preservation over protecting his wife and children by fleeing in the face of impending death—but being buried under a ton of ice might’ve been preferable to the emotional freeze he’ll have to endure instead.