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| The hip, eye-catching poster for Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure |
Force Majeure is the astounding Swedish Oscar entry this year, which has taken audiences aback most places it has run. It is the 4th feature written and directed by Ruben Östlund (Play (2011)).
On a 5 day family holiday in the French Alps to ski, a Swedish nuclear family share a traumatizing experience one day in a restaurant on the slopes, as an avalanche nearly buries them alive, and the man of the family acts differently than everyone had expected.
Force Majeure works like a human study, and the four main characters are presented very much like present day human specimens, put forth for our observation. There's an exhibitionist quality to the film, also apparent in the maintenance guy who hangs around the hotel and helps the family out while quietly observing them.
The movie is one of those that have a very distinct look and visual concept: Östlund and cinematographer Fredrik Wenzel (The Quiet Roar (2014)) present the conflicts in some very persuasive images that are never without their own points, besides the ones that the scenes embody.
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| A poignant still from Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure that illustrates very well the situation that the family in the film come to find themselves in |
The details:
The acting in the film is very strong: Johannes Kuhnke (Real Humans (2012-14)) and Lisa Love Kongsli (Fatso (2008)) as the couple, Kristofer Hivju (The Thing (2011)) and Fanni Metelius (The Sexual Monologues (2011), short) as the friendly couple who get involved with their issues, and Brady Corbet (Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)) in a key scene as an outsider.
The film works also as an exposé and a seething critique of contemporary Swedes, (as its original title, which means 'tourist', also indicates.) - The Swedes of Östlund's generation are, in this film, mostly unsympathetic, egotistical tourists in their own lives; grown up in a society of increasingly feminine values, emotionally over-nursing, fiercely atheistic and stifling. If I hadn't personally felt so detached from them, their influence on their kids may have been more of an emotional ordeal for me.
As it is, the film is an intriguing, very intelligent play of gender roles, relationship politics and modern life, arranged in supreme pictures, sound design and its eerie Vivaldi motif. Darkly humorous, wry, scathing, and serious, it also lays bare the many anxiety-provoking aspects of the skiing holiday very powerfully.
I am nearly ready to declare this meaningful film that works on so many levels a masterpiece. - I wanted it to end at the time, SPOILER when the family head into the white blizzard, father first, which would have been the perfect end for me. Instead, it had some more in store for us, which was also good, but ended up detracting a tiny bit from the whole, I think.
Watch the excellent trailer here
Cost: Unknown
Box office: 1.2 mil. $ (US only)
= Uncertainty
[Without the cost of the film and especially some European box office numbers, I can't say for sure if the film has proven financially successful yet, although I suspect that it has. It received the Jury Prize from the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes 2014, and is still very much in the race for the Best Foreign Film Oscar 2015.]
What do you think of Force Majeure?
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