Force Majeure

Eagerly anticipated after his stirring 2011 drama Play, Force Majeure saw Swedish director Ruben Ostlund lose out on the Best Foreign Film at this year’s Oscars but scoop the Jury Prize for Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

Tomas (Kuhnke) and Ebba (Kongsli) are an upper middle class couple enjoying the slopes on the French Alps with their two children (Vincent and Clara Wettergren). Sitting down to a meal at a roof restaurant, they observe a controlled avalanche cascading down the mountain. Fascination turns to horror as the avalanche nears the restaurant and spooks the diners - a scared Tomas grabs his phone and gloves and flees, leaving his trembling wife and kids to their fate. Luckily, it’s a false alarm, but Tomas’ instinct to protect himself and not his children burrows away at the distressed Ebba. And Tomas has a different take on the event.

Ostlund’s laid back and unobtrusive style is at work again. As with Play the camera is allowed to sit and let everything unfold, with long scenes twisting and turning in front of the lens (the static exterior shots allow the eye to appreciate Fredrik Wenzel’s beautiful cinematography). The camera’s positing is used to hint at things too: a dinner scene has Ebba sit down in the foreground, blocking Tomas from our view but keeping the two kids in shot; the mise en scene suggesting that dad may not be in the picture much longer. But Ostlund works the ear as much as the eye: The clang and creak of the ski lifts, and the boom of the controlled avalanches, slowly but surely heighten tension.

Although it has moments of humour – Tomas’ buddy (Game Of Thrones’ Kijvu) arrives at the resort and his relationship with his twenty-year-old girlfriend is affected by Tomas’ cowardice – Force Majeure is more a dry examination of masculinity. Emasculated by his flight instinct, Tomas seeks to regain some semblance of manliness: he cheers up when a girl approaches him in the bar to tell him her friend finds him cute (funnily, it’s a case of mistaken identity); he joins in with some rowdy semi-naked men for a party of hard drinking; and clumsily comes on to Ebba while there’s still static between them. Eventually he gives up and wails like a child and Ebba is forced to unsubtly manufacture a situation where he feels like a hero again.