Force Majeure

Synopsis: Swedish couple Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and her husband Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) have brought their two kids (Clara and Vincent Wettergren) to the French Alps for a skiing holiday.  On the second day, the serenity of their family lunch at an outdoor restaurant is interrupted by an avalanche. Ebba’s first instinct is to grab the kids and drag them to safety. Tomas’ first instinct is to grab his iPhone and run.  When the threat of destruction passes benignly, everyone returns to their meals. But there is damage nonetheless to the relationship between husband and wife compounded by Tomas’ refusal to admit his cowardice.

Unusually, we are offered no backstory to the central characters in this astute comic drama. It works well, leaving us to fend for ourselves and, like the phlegmatic hotel cleaner who seems an ever-present witness to their unfolding (and unravelling) story, we must draw our own conclusions as to who these people are.  They are a very handsome couple with very assertive children. And they are well-off, that’s a given. This is an expensive place they are staying in an idyllic location made even more majestic by Fredrik Wenzel’s beautiful cinematography. And there is strain in their marriage. Despite their familiar physicality and Ebba’s little jokes about Tomas’ constant checking of his iPhone, there is a chill between them – a palpable undercurrent of tension that is inevitably revealed on Day 2 in the aftermath of the avalanche.

The humour in this film is excruciatingly uncomfortable; not because it isn’t funny – it is – but because it so accurately portrays the kind of creeping friction that you only find in a long term relationship. It’s not so much that there are funny lines but rather that we laugh or, more often, smile knowingly to ourselves at the authenticity of the look or the body language that reveals the lie in a "What’s the matter?" "Nothing" exchange.

It would be easy to characterize Force Majeure as an exploration into the foibles of a handsome, confident and well-to-do husband and father who turns out to have feet of clay. But it’s more than that. It’s an essay in how relaxed and leisurely time away from the constancy of a hectic life can, rather than being restorative, provide the space and time for us to properly see the nagging faults and failures we all try to keep from each other. For Ebba, her dissatisfaction is fuelled by her encounters with a woman she befriends in the bar who describes how well her open marriage works as she flirts with the younger man she’s picked up on the ski slopes. For Tomas, his failings are only accentuated by the clumsy attempts at assistance from his friend who arrives on Day 3 with a much younger girl on his arm.  

Despite being so observationally sharp and perceptive, the film begins to sag by Day 5. It starts to feel like we’re going over the same territory and there’s a risk that it won’t sustain itself for all of its two hour running time. When the Final Day slide comes onto the screen it’s somewhat of a relief. Thankfully, though, the shift in focus to the family’s departure brings a new energy that allows us to forgive that erstwhile shortcoming as we follow them on an inexplicably bizarre bus ride down the mountainside towards the film’s unresolved but strangely satisfying end.

FYI:  “Force majeure”  is a legal term used in contract law to frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, prevents one or both parties from fulfilling their obligations under the contract.

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